The Sneaky Pint: Darragh Boyle

Posted on June 20, 2019 / by The Drunken Poet

Darragh Boyle has been playing rings for 20 years. The first time he picked up a ring and threw it on a hook, he felt electricity in his veins. He’d always known he had a gifted wrist, but in that moment, in the back bar at Scanlan’s, just to the left of the women’s toilet and to the right of the cash machine, well that’s when he knew that he’d found his calling. Sure, he usually had to be at least 10 pints in before he could even be arsed getting up to play and then usually had to spend at least 30 minutes finding someone to play with him, but this was his game and he had a point to prove.
Unfortunately Rings is a cruel mistress and Darragh’s rings game went down the toilet right along with his mobile phone. (He was texting while pissing and it slipped.) After going Pro, the pressure became unbearable for Darragh. The fans, the late nights, the cheap motels and yes, even the game of Rings led to Darragh’s game falling on fallow ground. When he dropped his mobile in the urinal at McCarthy’s, he knew he’d hit rock bottom. It hit his family the hardest. His Dad, who was constantly being bought drinks on the back of Darragh’s success, was suddenly having to buy his own. Mary Boyle, Darragh’s Mam, who’d watched, with swelling pride, the meteoric rise of Darragh’s rings game, became addicted to online shopping and Ferrero Rocher. Darragh himself recalls the time as his “fucken shite” phase. It was too much for Darragh and he literally threw in the rings, never intending to touch the game again.
Six months later, 10 000 kms away, Darragh Boyle is many pints in and busting for a piss in The Drunken Poet. He sways, his eyes drifting from the jukebox, across the portraits, till they blurrily rest on the rings board. He struggles to avert his gaze, but he’s absolutely about to burst, so he takes a slash after noting in his diary the upcoming gigs conveniently advertised to the right of the Men’s toilet.
And as Darragh watches his torrent of piss splash into the toilet and only occasionally missing the bowl, a most resplendent set of axioms are revealed to him. Rings Theory! Adding, multiplying, sets of integers, universal enveloping algebras, polynomial identities, commutative rings, non-commutative rings; all become quite clear to him while staring into the abyss of the toilet bowl. Rings wasn’t just a game anymore, it was the UNIVERSE!
Darragh walked out to the rings board. He looked at it. The Rings board looked back at Darragh and numbers, integers and the polynomial universal enveloping commutatives started to shoot out at him like asteroids being sucked in and spat out through a black hole. Throwing rings at a board used to be so simple, but now the complexity was beautiful. He grabbed the rings, stepped back to the mark and let fly.
*(Darragh was seriously pissed at this stage, but maintains that Rings Theory is a real thing. Rings aside though, he has an enormous reputation for speaking out of his hole.)

Any scoops, please email sneakyscandal@gmail.com , but don’t waste my time, this pint won’t
drink itself.