Originally published in Around Magazine, 2026

Pat went down to the Moone High Cross Inn most evenings for a pint. He’d be up early to feed the cattle, he’d work til one on the dot, then have lunch that the wife would put out, which was always soup, and then he’d have a nap before feeding the cattle in the afternoon. He’d be off to the pub then in the evenings for a jar. Maybe two if he wasn’t driving, and he had permission from the wife. His father, who’d owned the farm before him, had much the same routine.

The pub did very well, by all accounts. Clint Eastwood had been there once. A heifer had been calving, so Pat had missed him. Had an arm halfway up a cow’s arse, while the rest of the parish were shaking hands with Dirty Harry. Typical.

Aside from Clint passing through, and that robbery back in 2005, a couple of gobshites with balaclavas and a sawed off, the pub was not known for its excitement. It was a slow paced, rural pub, and that’s how Pat liked it. Quiet. Traditional.

There was a couple in tonight. Not local? Pat had asked them as they came in. They’d smiled politely enough, asked how he could tell. He had long hair and a couple of earrings. Her head was shaved like she was just out of the monastery. Tattoos up her arms. Sure, just a hunch, he’d said. They’d liked that. Nice enough couple, down from the Big Smoke no doubt. Fuck knows what they were doing out in the sticks. South Kildare of all places. Everyone was onto the Airbnbs these days. Cheaper than a weekend away on the Wild Atlantic, Pat supposed.

They sat at the back and started having an argument, quietly, in the corner. There were six or seven people in that night, including the barman and his son. A quiet Tuesday. And they all did their best to talk so as not to be eavesdropping. But it wasn’t a big place and there was only so much one could do if a couple came down from Dublin to air their dirty laundry in public.

There wasn’t a thing either could say without the other taking offence. To Pat, it seemed they were arguing just to argue. To pass the time. The hottest part of a flame was the yellow bit, says one. No, it’s the blue bit, says the other. Shackleton, a Kildare man himself, did his exploring in the Arctic, he says. It was Antarctica, she says just as quick. Was Syria in Africa, or wasn’t it? These were all features of the argument. Words that swam across the quiet pub, despite the young couple’s best attempts to keep things civil. Holding hands, speaking in whispers that stabbed out at each other, sharp as kitchen knives. Pat couldn’t imagine three subjects he thought less warranted an argument. Feminism seemed to come up a good bit too.

Pat stared at his pint. Him and the wife didn’t argue. Didn’t talk enough to argue. The routine of the farm didn’t invite much time for arguing, little shifted in their day to day. Sometimes he thought he would have liked to live a different life, away from the farm and Castledermot. His routine. Have new experiences, meet people from different cultures, with different ideas.

But really, Pat knew he was happy where he was. His routine, his cows. His wife. His pub. He wouldn’t know how to talk to a woman with no hair and tattoos up her arms, and he was okay with that. He turned around and signalled to the barman’s son for another round. He had driven down but sure it was only up the road, and what’s the difference between two and three anyway? The local Garda was his brother-in-law.

https://around.ink/around_work/an-argument-in-the-moone-high-cross/