There is no bank in Lisdoonvarna, nor are there any ATM machines. The nearest watering hole for cash is eight miles away in the north Co Clare town of Ennistymon, but that does not stop the money flowing during the six-week long matchmaking festival that finishes this weekend. A large sign - "Live life to the power of Guinness" - dominates an entry road to the village, and festival-goers oblige, adding lagers, spirits and Red Bull to the cocktail. The healthinducing sulphur waters of the traditional spa village are lost in the melee. Even the non-alcoholic beer is well past its "best before" date. Drinking starts at 11 a.m. and continues to the early hours next day. Hotel manager Marcus White has put old carpets down on the new to protect them against the onslaught of liquids as elbows jostle, bodies squeeze past one another and pints teeter.
Then there's the dancing. Beginning at midday, there's a late afternoon session before the long evening begins. For many people, it's the reason they are there. Opportunities for concentrated ballroom dancing and country & western bands are rare. Trumpeter Johnny Carroll plays every weekend. But White, manager of the four hotels owned by the White group in the area, also has a mischievous eye for the exotic. This weekend he has Diva David Stella, a seven-foot tall transsexual, techno DJs and dancers from India, Brazil and Amsterdam as part of his efforts to broaden the festival's appeal. The Q Club, the nightclub in the Hydro Hotel, had a £370,000 refit earlier this year.
It's only a room away from where Johnny Carroll is playing, but the venues are worlds away for the respective crowds. In the Q Club there are dancing poles, doubling as vantage points for the bouncers. On the stage, barechested youths and bikini-clad young women dance in the soaring temperatures. At the end of the night, with the lights on and the last of the music playing out, two gardai arrive to watch the club empty. One loses his cap which is whisked off to the dance floor and eventually returns. But it's all good-humoured enough. Back in the ballroom, the outnumbered women take the advances in their stride: "Some of the men are really lecherous. One man tried to snog me after the first dance this afternoon," says Catherine Scully, a 36-year-old Dubliner who has spent the past 14 years in London. "I am just here to have a bit of fun. It has been great craic."
Her mother, Catherine Whelan, is there with her husband, whom she met at a dance in the Regency Hotel, Dublin. "We go to about three dances a day. It is great exercise," she says.
"For the craic" is a line repeated often. "You would not really want to be coming here looking for a man. We have been coming here for the past 12 to 15 years," says Pauline Hederman. From Arklow, Co Wicklow, she and her friend Rita McNamara travelled up for the weekend following the Listowel Races. They are married but have left their husbands at home. "It is a break, it is our holiday," they say. Joe Sweeney, a 46-year-old from Cashel, is in Lisdoonvarna for the first time. He says "this whole scene" is all over Tipperary. "I am single, so I do not know what is around the corner."
Although matchmaking is the least of the festival's activities, it does take place. Willie Daly, a third-generation matchmaker, publican and part-time farmer, walks around carrying an untidy-looking ledger under his arm. A more recent addition to it is a ring-binder notebook, full of names and addresses of people looking for partners - in a ratio of four to one of men to women. But what might once have been seen as an antiquated profession has come full circle with the rise of dating agencies and Web dating.
Although many of his matches are introducing people face to face, he has turned to the Web and enlisted his daughter Marie in carrying on the tradition. Just returned from a matchmaking trip in New York, he talks about "a big American dream about Ireland". There are many Irish-American women on the look out for an Irish husband, he says, and "there are so many bachelors in the west of Ireland".
A separated man, Daly adds that many of the people who come to him have come out of long-term relationships. "It takes them some time before they can go back out. Sometimes going into the busy discos and pubs is a little too much for them to face back into."
Willie Daly's website is www.williedaly.com
The Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival website is www.matchmakerireland.com
