A miserable night in Wexford town

November 1994

Can you picture being stranded in a strange town overnight with nowhere to stay, the rain pouring down, no cigarettes, feeling miserable, and sheltering in doorways?

That, by his own written account, was the experience of top-selling Irish author Joe O’Connor during a visit to Wexford recently to give a reading at the County Library.

He arrived a bit late because of a train delay and went straight to the library instead of checking into his B&B. Then after the reading, he went drinking to a number of local establishments with people from the library.

One hour followed another until it was 1.30 a.m. before be found himself being driven around Wexford by a library staff member and her boyfriend, looking for his B&B. They couldn’t find it.

At 2 a.m., they dropped him off at White’s Hotel, where he hoped to get a room instead – only to discover there was no room at the inn. Sorry, they said, completely booked out.

For the remainder of the night, he wandered around town in the rain, waiting for the morning train to take him back to Dublin.

Writing in the Sunday Tribune, Mr O’Connor – brother of the controversial singer Sinead – revealed that he only began to panic when he put his hand into his pocket and discovered ‘oh my god, no cigarettes left!’

There he was, the author who had been feted by the town’s literary fans just a few hours earlier, walking up to strangers on the street to ask them for fags.

He also told how the cold and hunger progressive began getting to him.

‘By 5 a.m., I would have murdered by granny for a blanket,’ he wrote. ‘By 6 a.m., I would have done it for a burger.’

Wexford’s hospitality didn’t fare too well on this occasion. Thank God, he didn’t follow his sister’s example by taking out a full page advert in the Irish Times to voice his feelings on it, the way Sinead O’Connor did recently on another topic.