Disco era in 1970s Cork, a time when we courted and sashayed

THE coloured lights are flashing like beacons around the hall. Every once in a while, a known face is illuminated by the whirling rays of light.

People slowly filter in and gather in small clusters in the different corners. Lying Eyes by The Eagles is playing and the DJ is shuffling for the next tune.

On the floor are a few couples but most are hanging back, too nervous or just not in the mood yet. It’s the Edel Quinn Hall in my native Kanturk of a Friday night.

These would be the first discos we would attend, and we would progress to venues further afield.

The Highland in Newmarket was quite the place. If you didn’t have transport, you would take the bus or stand over on O’Brien Street and try and hitch a ride.

This worked well on your way there, but held only a slender window of opportunity for the trip home. It was many the night we sauntered back in the dark by Allens Bridge, Rosacon, and home.

Who remembers ‘The Crush’ in Newmarket? A sight to behold. The ladies would all be lined along the upper wall in the hall and the men, some not so young, would file up and down in a throng looking at prospective possibilities.

It was a madhouse, a ‘meat market’, worse than any crowd filing out of a sporting event. But of course this was the ultimate sporting event.

Once in a while, a brave soul would make a go for it, shrug off all doubts and nervousness and stride over to interrupt ladies in conversation; pulling himself through the crowd like a drowning man trying to make shore.

Depending on the response, he would find himself following her on to the dance floor for a set of three, or try to muster as much composure and indifference as possible if she denied his request.

I wonder at the psychological inflictions and maiming that occurred here that would take years to recover from, if ever.

After your first ‘success’, you had to hold a conversation over the loud bass of the music and the din of the crowd, and perhaps deal with the seeming disinterest of your partner. You’d wonder if all your friends are watching.

If you were lucky, the band might play some rocking tune by Dire Straits, Eric Clapton, Queen or Joe Jackson. If you had the bad fortune to catch the start of a slow set of Bee Gees, Exile or The Commodores, you were pretty much finished.

“Will you stay on?” you’d ask.

There may be a pregnant pause, she will thank you for dancing and leave you.

Well, at least you got to dance.

You return to your friends, shrug it off as her fault - she had a few missing teeth, no personality, she had two left feet, or just was not your type.

We were mystified and at odds with the mind and workings of the opposite sex. When you thought they liked you, they would walk off anyway after seeming to have a good time. If you ignored them they told you after you acted a snob. You couldn’t win or figure them out in these early years. Come to think of it, some still can’t!

On the other hand, if you were suave, played a good air guitar, or could mouth the lyrics, you were in with a chance... a chance! Or were the son of a big farmer with the father’s car parked outside. A large Datsun or Toyota with a cassette deck would do nicely. Of this I can only surmise, as I had neither.

I never once had any success in luring a candidate for another set, never mind to the fumbling clutches of a big car. The one I didn’t have outside. No, the only windows I would fog up would be the windows of the bus home to Kanturk.

The mating habits of some species take on strange and idiosyncratic forms, to say the least. Our own is no different.

Maybe it was this frustration mixed with the flood of rampant and unused hormones, but the male species will often turn on themselves, as was the case in Newmarket, The Highland in Millstreet or Mallow. There was often a scuffle as the Alpha male staked out his territory.

******

“‘The band are good tonight, do you come here often?”

It is the Star Ballroom in Millstreet, a favourite on a Thursday night, on the balcony overhead, looking down at the dancing crowd below. From here, you can watch your man gunned down in the first efforts of introduction. Or another left standing alone on the dance floor, mystified by the disappearance of his once smiling partner.

If only my father had bought the big farm and the big car!