Travel Story «Cathys Birthday Shenanigans»

Australia | 0 Comments 18 October 2006 - Last Update 24 December 2006

Last night we celebrated Cathys 26 birthday with dinner at (what is fast becoming a local haunt) Zia Pina - a fabulous and authentic Italian restaurant in The Rocks.  A rowdy 10 of us - Cathy - Birthday girl and her roomates Ruth, Brid, Hilary, Helen and their temporary residents Kenny and Cliffy plus Aisling Grainne and myself (Emily) - sang Happy Birthday in the restaurant at the top of our lungs only to be drowned out by the even rowdier Boys-Night-Out contingent of 4 on the next table over who then put us to shame by beginning a rendition of For She's A Jolly Good Fellow...
After interrupting everyone else's meals we moseyed over to The Mercantile for some after dinner drinks and to continue the embarrassment of Cathy that is part and parcel of birthday celebrations.  Hilary/Brid/Helen/Ruth (I am taking no responsibility for this) enlisted the help of the Pubs' live band (2 very pleasant older gentleman who play there every Monday and Wednesday night) at this point - they quickly had the whole pub (about 15 people of which we were 10) sing 'Happy Birthday' again and then called the lucky lady herself up to the stage to sing another song with them (Morto!). At this point Cathy hauled Brid up to the stage with her to share in the holy mortification of it all and along with some sheet music and words they delighted the crowd with a rendition of The Streets of London. It was marvelous and we were all thoroughly entertained! You too can enjoy this performance as it was captured on video by Hilary. Links to YouTube will follow!
Mission Mortification was just getting started at this point. Next the band INSISTED that Cathy dance her socks off and along with the help of Brid, Grainne and Aisling, the Waltz of Limerick was.....well I won't say enacted or danced - I'll say attempted.  Again, this delightful party piece was caught on camera by the little-know-soon-to-be-huge-in-Hollywood-camerawoman-Helen and links to Youtube will follow because we all need to share in this moment. 
The night continued to escalate entertainment wise, but this time we - the Cathy Birthday posse - were all spectators. Another Wednesday night Mercantile Patron (who we later found out was called Frankie) was the bands' prey this time and was enlisted to assist in entertaining the small but lively crowd (I don't know why the 2-man-show don't just get another band member if they need all this help from the audience...)- this time for instrumental purposes - and out came the spoons!!  It was like Lorna (who left us - ABANDONED US!  in favour of New Zealand (I'm working through my pain people) and who is the Spoon Pro of the group) was there with us - moment to reflect please....... OK. Moving on.  Frankie played those spoons like he had been playing them his whole life long (which in fairness, was probably true seeing as it is the first item of cutlery you are allowed to use on account of its bluntness....) and we were all mightily impressed. The next customer to step up was a blond Irish woman, (who I believe was possessed with jealousy over the attention the all-singing-all-dancing-stage-hog-Cathy was receiving from the band). She hopped up on stage and sang her little heart out with a powerful performance of The Cranberries song, Zombie.  More tunes followed as she clearly did not want to surrender the spotlight or microphone to the next audience/entertainer but we were more than happy to sit and watch for she kept us mightily entertained! During the songs she improvised words (when she forgot them) and displayed her flexibility by using the microphone stand, the stage, the chair - anything really - as a pole dancer would use her pole..... I'll say no more on that subject.  With comic asides and one liners flowing easily from her mouth we recognised a born entertainer and suspected she was a stand up comic back home. She had us (well, me at least) in stitches laughing and I don't think a smile left anyone's face all night.
When she finally bowed off stage we were informed she was none other than the daughter of the one and only Mr Brendan Grace! A ha! It all made sense! We later discovered she was also on her honeymoon having just got married last week in the lakeside town of Killaloe, Tipperary to none other that the spoon playing Frankie! We spent the remainder of the night chatting to her and her new husband - they were hilarious and lovely - and were finally kicked out of the pub (because it was closed -  I mean what kind of a reason is that?!!? Typical Australians!) and said Good bye to newly weds and watched them skip (literally) down the street hand in hand.
Happy Birthday Cathy! Emily