The Sneaky Pint: The Butterfly Effect

Posted on July 11, 2019 / by The Drunken Poet

If you’ve ever stood at the bar of The Drunken Poet on a Friday night, indulging in the outstanding value of the happy hour ($8 pints of Guinness, Kilkenny and Carlton), then you’ve probably got an idea of what chaos looks like. Did a butterfly over the Amazon cause this chaos? Is the chaos you’re witnessing in The Drunken Poet a fractal of the larger chaos that surrounds us all? If a butterfly flapping it’s wings over the Amazon can cause a hurricane in China, then for the purposes of this story my friends, our butterfly is Bob Dylan’s Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle.
It was July 29, 1966; a country road just outside Woodstock in New York State, and Bob Dylan was hugging the corners as he sped through the forest. Perhaps Bob was musing on his upcoming tour or maybe he was just really really high. The Sneaky Pint might not know the cause, but the result was that Bob crashed and by the time Frankie Lee slowly rolled passed in his Dodge, there was already an ambulance and a small crowd of onlookers in attendance. He slowed, almost to a crawl, one elbow hanging out the window. A nod to John Harding the sheriff and he was on his way, but that was all it took. Frankie was late for his job interview and that was the simple twist of fate. He was sick of being skint, but they say the darkest hour is right before the dawn. He ended up working as a cook for a spell, but he got the sack. Frankie drifted down to New Orleans and found some work on a fishing boat just outside Delacroix. He worked on the “Water Pearl” for 2 years and then one night when he stepped aboard, well….sometimes you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. There was no shelter from this storm. It was thought that they’d all been lost, but one survived. Niamh McBride had only just joined the crew. Frankie had gotten her the job after meeting her in O’Malley’s Bar. She clung onto some wreckage for 12 hours until a passing passenger ship picked her up.
The ship was headed for Belfast, which was where Niamh had come from before living in the States for 2 months. After docking in Belfast she met up with her cousin Arthur McBride. She stayed with him for a few days, but there was no work in Belfast, which is why Niamh had left in the first place, so she bought a ticket for a boat to Australia. With tears in his eyes, Arthur kissed her cheek and bid her goodbye. A hard rain was falling as the boat set off. Brendan stood next to Niamh on deck as they both watched Ireland disappear from view. When he looked at her for the first time, he knew that he was in love. Twelve months later a boy was born. He had three nipples, so they called him Triúr.
Triúr grew up in Bunbury Western Australia. He dropped out of high school and pursued cow tipping and tagging public toilets in his plentiful spare time. Bored of Bunbury he hitched rides until he made it to Melbourne. He’d heard tales of a mythical pub where the craic could levitate your spirit and the Guinness was so good it could make you weep with joy. He sat on the 57 tram as it made agonisingly slow progress towards The Drunken Poet. Sitting next to him was Fergal Starkey. They struck up a conversation and Triúr told Fergal about the Poet. It was the first Thursday of the month and Open Mic was about to start (7pm) as they walked through the door. Fergal got his name down just in time. When it was his turn, he stepped to the microphone, he closed his eyes and began to sing, “Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night…” The Hurricane blew, but for once, the Poet was still.
*The Sneaky Pint credits Bob Dylan with all of the above.

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