It is Tuesday, 6.30 p.m. and Galway is at a standstill. Cars out to Salthill are bumper to bumper. It is total gridlock. There is only one explanation. The Galway Arts Festival is being launched. Connacht no longer "lies in slumber deep". It's ready to rock. The starting gun is shot and they're away.
Oysters, salmon, brown bread and . . . bald men wearing Haiwaiian shirts! Meet Australian Neil Thomas, along with David Wells, Nick Papas and Andrew Morrish, who will be living under a microscope in an Urban Dream Capsule for the next two weeks, hanging out in the town's library for all to see "cooking, dancing, sleeping and ag cniotβil", as Papas says with a perfect blas.
Also hanging out at the opening is John Crumlish, chairman of the arts festival, his wife Eithne Verling, and their children, Luke (1) and Tom (3).
With a great accent, similar to the residents of Coronation Street, Ted Turton, festival director between 1996 and 1999, chats about Urban Dream Capsule, pointing out how cool is to have a free street event as the festival's flagship. He's interested to see how an art event can sustain itself 24 hours a day. His wife, Lali Turton, the new artistic director of Babar≤, the children's festival, is here too.
John Astin, the US actor, who declares the event open, says he has "always had a deep yearning to be in Galway". Everyone in the packed room understands. The moment for us all to burst into song passes. Warming to his subject, Astin delivers his gospel: "As food is to the body, art is to the soul. We cannot understand how to live in this world without the arts."
He stars in the one-man play, Edgar Allen Poe - Once Upon a Midnight, where, Astin explains, "the spirit of the writer appears in the theatre and attempts to straighten out his reputation. The only way he can do that is lay bare his heart . . . He takes the audience on a journey of the soul". O, for a journey of the soul.
Ian Kilroy is here too, nervous but delighted that his first play will be packing them in at the festival. The Carnival King is the fastest-selling ticket in town, says Jo Mangan, manager of Fishamble Theatre Company, which is producing the work.
Mary (always stylish) and Paul Grealish of Cuba, in Eyre Square, are here too. Their film-making friend from Romania, Dieter Anner, sucks up an oyster, as he says he's from Transylvania.
Fun is the order of the day and Mβir∅n O'Reilly, a festival volunteer, declares she's moving back to Galway with her husband, Ian McGrath, after about eight years in Dublin. For real.
The singer, Sean Keane, Dolores's youngest brother, is here with his wife, Virginia Keane. He'll be singing in Scarriff, Co Clare,tonight. Listen out for Isle of Hope, which is about Annie Moore, the young Irish girl who went through Ellis Island in 1892.
Also spotted at the party are bookseller Tom Kenny, festival board member Jacinta Dwyer and parade director Judith Higgins. What will she be doing during the parade? "Running up and down, going mad, screaming." The festival will continue to run (amok) until Sunday, July 29th.