Mop up the Puke: Rag Week is Over

30th Jan 2004

Rag Week Fallout
Mickey Mouse

First year college students who come to Cork City for the first time are often compared to young calves let loose in fields for the first time. Many of these bright young culchies have grown up in a one-pub-one-shop village deep in the Irish countryside - others have come from neighbouring cities where the crime rates have kept them indoors for the majority of their childhood. Arriving in the Beautiful City for the first time must be daunting. Seeing the big three and four lane streets and quays can be terrifying for a young culchie, often to be spotted trapped on a traffic island between several lanes of traffic terrified of sticking their foot on the roadway unable to monitor traffic approaching from so many angles.

On arrival in Cork City to start their college course they are induced into a bizarre world of student partying where nothing can happen without the presence and over-consumption of drink...free drink most importantly. If takes more than just a few weeks for young freshers to get to grips with their newly found freedom - but by the time Rag Week comes around their assimilation into the system is almost complete.

For years college students were tempted and tortured by the provision of happy hours. Participating venues would attempt to lure college students into their bars by supplying drink at knock down rates. 'Pints for a pound' and 'Beat the clock' was a favourite at one Barrack Street venue. Students were advised to make their way to the pub to take advantage of terribly tempting low prices. Trouble was these offers would be available from 5-6pm...often of a Monday.

Once six o'clock came and you'd got a few cheap pints into you couldn't believe your luck as the bar girl (who despite subtly relieving you of this week's grant over the course of the night slowly turned from significantly ugly to remarkably attractive) brought out a huge plate laiden with cocktail sausages and microwaved chicken pieces. Damn! Just when you were thinking you'd leave it at that and head home for your dinner. At this point there was no justifiable excuse for leaving the pub. Except of course the guilt of spending the money your folks gave you to buy a rain coat on pints of watered down Norwegian cider. But tomorrow is another day and according to the bar girl "its not supposed to rain until the weekend".

PUKE OF THE WEEK! (Click to enlarge) We found this little party piece on Merchants Quay on Tuesday evening in a phone booth. From a detailed forensic examination its clear that the puker was inside the booth at the time of nutritional ejection. The impact, as you can see from the photos, produced a significantly large puke landing area preventing those with sandals and flip-flops from entering the booth. Doctors at UCC suggest a vicious reaction like this "could only have been brought about by a Dublin brewed stout". Unbelievable.

Government legislation and bye-laws have quenched the flame that heated the liver of many a student alcoholic but Rag Week ensures that any potential alcoholic is fully tried and tested before he or she starts to knuckle down for the summer exams.

There has always been a slightly weird fascination with drink related vomit in Cork. Walking around the streets of Cork City especially around the "Washington Strip" any Wednesday or Thursday morning and among the quiet diligence of hundreds of Cork citizens heading to their place of work you would hardly think that hours earlier the place was a mass of drink fuelled roaring student zombies throwing themselves dangerously onto the street and rolling around reliving some childhood playground experience. Among the discarded chip wrappers, burger cartons, broken beer bottles you will find the harsher most unpleasant evidence of super-intoxication: vomit.

Like the way detectives can piece together the significant last movements of a murder victim as you walk the streets of Cork early on a weekday morning you can pretend to be D.I. Murphy of the Special Crime Squad. These four pieces of evidence always come in a particular order on a street. First the frozen vomit, then a few yards away about 50 mushy chips ground together by a footprint quickly followed by an almost empty glass of beer. Inevitably this will have been deposited on a window sill not far from a cab shop or taxi rank. The fourth and final piece of some student's drunken story that will give him or her something to babble about in lectures especially if you haven't managed to score.

The Roundy Puke! (click to enlarge) We found this little steamer outside the Roundy on Castle Street the other night. According to our medical sources (some feen whose old man works up in de Reee-jen-ill) this was more than likely the result of consumming a drink far too posh for one's stomach. It was probably some old doll thinking she was some Celtic Tiger kitten from the Pale. Her Cork stomach let her know pretty quick who she was...by the colour of the gawk we'd say it was one of those drinks for the "mini-iest" of shit talkers.

"Highlights" of UCC's Rag Week include the gunge chamber where misfortunate students are forced in a glass cubical by the organisers in front of a lunchtime audience of their peers. The helpless student is then doused in vomit, the result of various on-stage drinking and eating games. Beautiful.

Snogging: another oral exercise commonly practised by students on Rag Week that usually only takes place after copious amounts of gat have been consumed. The "romantic" endeavours of students in Rag Week club nights during rag week would have parish priests performing 24 hour masses if they only knew. Snogging less than five different members of the opposite sex on a night out is a decent bench mark for a moderately successful night out. It is estimated that one in three snogs will land you a variation of the flu and a week in bed.