‘All the auld filth starts to come out,’ Alan Fettle said.

Vivien approached her husband, and embraced him, and planted a light kiss on his neck as they held each other against the darkness. Then she bit him on the neck. Blood came in great, angry spurts. I vomited, briefly, and decided to put on some music.

I looked out the landing window as I dashed along the corridor to get some CDs from my room – this was a bad move:

Seven sheep in a rowing boat were being bobbed about on the vicious waters of Killary. The sheep appeared strangely calm.

I picked lots of old familiars: Abba, The Pretenders, Bryan Adams.

I pelted back to the function room.

‘We’re here!’ I cried. ‘We might as well have a disco!’

Oh, and we danced the night away out on the fjord of Killary. We danced to ‘Chiquitita’, slowly and sensuously; we danced in great, wet-eyed nostalgia to ‘Brass in Pocket’, and we had all the old steps still, as if 1979 was only yesterday; we punched the air madly to ‘Summer of ’69’.

I went out to the landing to find the six Belarusians sitting on the top step of the stairs. The waters of Killary were halfway up the stairs. Footstools sailed by in the lobby below, toilet rolls, place mats, phone books. But what could I do?

I returned to the function room and served out pints hand over fist.

All mobile signals were down.

There appeared on the horizon no saviours in hi-viz clothing.

The waters were rising yet.

And the view was suddenly clear to me. The world opened out to its grim beyonds and I realised that, at forty, one must learn the rigours of acceptance. Capitalise it: Acceptance. I needed to accept what was put before me – be it a watery grave in Ireland’s only natural fjord, or a return to the city and its greyer intensities, or a wordless exile in some steaming Cambodian swamp hole, or poems or no poems, or children or not, lovers or not, illness or otherwise, success or its absence. I would accept all that was put in my way, from here on through until I breathed my last.

Electrified, I searched for a notebook.

Bill Knott danced. John Murphy danced. The McAllisters and the Fettles waltzed. The Belarusians dry-humped one another in the function room’s dark corners. The Hartys were in deep, emotional conversation in a booth – Mick held to his bleeding neck a wad of napkins. I myself took to the floor, swivelling slowly on my feet, and I closed my eyes against the swirling lights. The pink backs of my eyelids became twin screens for flashing apparitions of my childhood pets.

‘Are ye enjoyin’ yereselves, lads?’

‘What would we be talkin’ about for Loughrea, would you say?’

‘Didn’t I come back from that place one lung half the size of the other?’

‘That’s England for you.’

I ran out to the landing for a spot check on the flood, and was met there by Alexei, the wall-eyed Belarusian. He indicated with a happy jerk of his thumb the water level on the stairs. It had dropped a couple of steps. I patted his back, and winked just the once, and returned to the disco.