Wandering down Galway's Shop Street in this week's balmy weather has been like a passagiata. The arts festival is winding down now, but the races are about to start at Ballybrit, and the city is still in festive mode. Folk fill the streets, eat at pavement cafes around Quay Street and peer at the Blue Boys - four male figures, unmoving in Moons' window. Which is real? asks the assembled crowd, filling half the width of the street.
You'll meet all sorts on the streets of Galway. Tom Gorman from Chicago, dapper in suit and dickie bow, has been around all week, a guest of the city from its twin on Lake Michigan, a contributing editor to the glossy Irish American magazine World of Hibernia and working on a biography of Lady Lavery, among other things.
Comic Barry Murphy, voice and scriptwriter of the festival radio adverts, came with his wife, actress, singer and TV presenter Flo McSweeney, and son. Back in Dublin, Murphy is rehearsing for next week's live Apres Match show at Vicar Street. Also in town was a clatter of cartoonists, drawing for the children at Kenny's Gallery, where there is an exhibition of their work; Phelim Connelly, Tom Mathews and Graham Keyes from Dublin, and special guest Hunt Emerson from Britain.
Writer Willie Russell (Blood Brothers, Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine) - who gave a very funny reading on the theme of transvestites and nativity plays - declared he'd love to live in Galway but feared he'd never get any work done.
Also seen around town were composer Bill Whelan, Los Angeles curator and long-time friend of the festival, Jack Rutberg, actor Sean McGinley and artist Ger Sweeney delighted to have sold - at last count - 10 paintings from his exhibition at the Town Hall Theatre. Galway's adopted son, Little John Nee, was ever-present, sporting a gelled peroxide hairdo - necessary for his lunchtime show, the last in his Derry trilogy, at the same theatre. Another visitor who went native a long time ago, Joe Boske, was enjoying the appreciative feedback for his solo exhibition at the West End Gallery.
Even the shops were in surrealist mode - a singing fish had a starring role on the counter of Conlon's fish restaurant on Eglinton Street. "Take me to the river", it croaked, tail and fins flapping.