Dan Gallagher has played it safe since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, but he was glad to be back in Chaplin's Bar in Bandon on Wednesday, with the sounds of Cheltenham and fellow punters filling the air.
“I don’t normally go to the pub to watch the racing, I normally watch the racing every weekend at home,” he said. “It’s only really the big events I’d come to the pub for so it’s great to be back here for Cheltenham.
“It’s a nice atmosphere. It’s an event, rather than just an afternoon at home. I’ve been a bit lazy about coming out after Covid but I’ve come out today for the racing,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say I’m not worried. I live with my mum and she’s old but I think we have to live with Covid now. I’ve got my booster, I wear my mask if it’s a crowded space but I think we do have to move on.”
Denis O’Donovan was one of a number of customers who have taken time off work to watch the racing at leisure, and he was glad to be doing so, and gladder still to be doing so in the company of friends and neighbours.
‘Bit of fun’
“I’ll back one in every race, unfortunately not too often the right one, but anyway. I don’t back heavily so it’s just a bit of fun. We were tied down for long enough, it’s nice to get out and be able to go back to some kind of normality,” he said.
“This would be a pub for racing normally on a Saturday afternoon. Even during the week you’d have people coming in here to see a particular race. They may or may not stay longer, it depends whether they win or lose,” he added.
Welcoming back his regular customers for Cheltenham feels like a line has finally being drawn under Covid-19 after two difficult years, said John Collins, landlord of the Kilbrogan Hill pub in the west Cork town.
In 2020, the lockdown was imposed just as Cheltenham was about to start: “It was very early days and I think people didn’t see the seriousness of it at the time. So for Cheltenham the last two years we haven’t been open,” he said.
Cautious regulars
His “wet” pub was closed for nearly 16 months in all: “That was very difficult for us, but since July it’s been okay. It’s been different. A lot of people are cautious. A lot of my regulars, a good few that had medical issues, for example, still haven’t frequented the pub, and I can understand that.”
Throughout, he has tried to navigate his way through: “At Christmas when they brought in the eight o’clock closing, well for 24 hours we were all ranting and raving but then we just had to get on with it.”
Normally, his pub does not open in the afternoons but he decided to do so during the Christmas fortnight when most people were on holidays: “So Christmas was good. No records broken, but I was very happy,” he said.
The pub trade after Covid-19 is less predictable: “You could be here on Wednesday night and expecting very few and you could have 15 or 20 people, or you’d be expecting some crowd of a Saturday night and it would be down. But the graph is going the right way slowly”.