Aoife Considine
Staff Writer
I did not attend Thursday night’s Ents Mystery Tour. This is mainly due to the fact that it’s the type of event I’d most likely end up dead or seriously injured at. “Mystery Location” for starters makes me uneasy. I often find it difficult enough making my way home after a night out in Dublin, put me in a random little town in the middle of Ireland and I may as well be trekking through the middle of the Sahara with no compass. Every year I’m astounded to hear that everyone arrives home safely, got to hand it to the Ents crew for that one. I did however hear a story once of a Mystery Tour in Belfast that ended up in Sligo and the buses left them, meaning everyone had to pay for taxis the whole way back to Belfast at 3 o’clock in the morning.
The whereabouts of this year’s mystery tour seems still a mystery to most people, however. I asked around a few hungover souls last Friday but all I could establish was that one of the places was “Dun-something-or-other” and the second place was somewhere in the greater Cavan area, but don’t quote me on this. I suppose for Dubliners who’ve never spent a 4am walk home through fields going cow tipping, the allure of the Mystery Tour to the country for a night is tempting, but for a country dweller like myself, I like to keep my “out-of-Pale nights out” restricted to special occasions like Christmas, and as little as possible to be honest.
I suppose the fact that no one really knew where the hell they were just goes to show that location doesn’t matter too much for a mystery tour; sure it’s all about the “Bus Bants” after all, no? I fear that the person who first mixed buses full of students and alcohol may also be the inventor of that horrid orange and chocolate Rice Krispie square they were giving out free during Fresher’s Week. If this was Twitter, I’d be ‘hashtaging’ #thingsthatdonotmix right now. Being on a bus for any length of time with alcohol-fuelled youths more often than not ends up in awkward shifting (from which you cannot drift away), bladders almost bursting, and vomit everywhere. Bus journeys are not enjoyable things; they are long and you are generally stuck sitting beside someone you neither know nor like. I suppose the addition of alcohol to make it through this horrendous experience is acceptable, but don’t come crying to me if you end up drunkenly fondling “that person you were stuck sitting beside” after a few too many slugs of vodka and lemon from your Fanta Orange bottle.
Another reason people go on the Trinity Mystery Tour is that “Everyone’s Going!!!” Well they’re not; you didn’t see me there did you? I jest, in all honesty, pretty much everyone was going, and come Thursday evening I felt a pang of regret as I trundled through Trinity with my heavy bag and rain coat on at 7pm, watching all the excited girls tottering about in heels and lads swigging from cans of the finest, cheapest beer Tesco sells. Then I reminded myself that on Friday morning I had a 9am Maths lecture that I would be making it to and that my drunken, loutish, Mystery Tour attendee classmates would be missing. I would therefore beat them in all proceeding exams we ever had ever and I would be king of Maths for eternity and learn things in that lecture that they and the rest of the world would know nothing about.
Come Friday morning I lay in bed listening to the rain lashing against my window, turned over, and went back to sleep.
My Maths lecturer took attendance in that 9am lecture. Next year, I’m going on the Mystery Tour.
