DUBLIN’S HEADY BREW
A weekend in Ireland’s capital is refreshing in more ways than one, says
DUBLIN is so full of craic addicts that I found myself getting irritable. I enjoy lively conversation, but sometimes the drollery gets to you. especially in the morning. craic In any case, the word is fauxGaelic, a bogus neologism stolen from the english word ‘crack’ then borrowed back by the Brits.
I was on a barstool in Toners pub while my amiable guide Damon was on Baggot Street having a smoke. Another brace of pints arrived. ‘Our Guinness,’ he said proudly, as he swept back, wreathed in Golden Virginia, ‘has a uniquely quaffable flavour thanks to the Liffey water.’
He had been talking 20 to the dozen since we set out, and showed no sign of abating, but the fag breaks gave me time to ponder his words of wisdom.
The poet W.B. Yeats, he said, went only once to a pub during his whole life. And that was to Toners, for a glass of sherry he failed to finish. Perhaps he did not like the craic.
The tone of the day had been set shortly after breakfast, before the taverns had opened their welcoming doors to a fresh harvest of punters.
We were heading for The Little Museum to see the latest exhibition, a celebration of Dublin pub culture, would you believe.
In pride of place was a magnificent photograph of that shipwreck of a playwright, Brendan Behan, the so-called ‘drinker with a writing problem’, who was holed below the Plimsoll line before lunch most days.
And, of course, James Joyce featured large. This was the man who wrote the script for Dublin in his great novel Ulysses, from the safety of Switzerland.
I found Ulysses unreadable until I heard some of it read aloud, when the jokes started leaping off the page. A symphony of human nonsense, as alive today as it was a century ago. Only now it is an industry.
We were in the grid of Georgian streets between Trinity College and St Stephen’s Green, erstwhile stomping ground of Joyce and his gallimaufry of characters. Davy Byrnes was a bar the great man drank in, as did Leopold Bloom, from the pages of the novel. Chalked above the bar was a plug for ‘Bloomsday G&T’. Yours for €13.50 (£12.50). The place was expensively tacky.
‘I think we’ll trot along to Doheny & Nesbitt, you’ll really like that,’ said Damon. ‘It’s where journalists and politicians mingle in cavernous rooms of lacquered antiquity. It really is the finest jewel in Dublin’s giant crown.’
And how right he was. All was perfect, even the folk music, which I normally abhor. Carved timber, ornate papier-mâché ceiling, everything burnished as if for parade.
The walls exuded more history than drunken blarney. The singing guitarist was at the bar and we were soon talking like old friends — him, me and my new best friend, Damon.
THere followed a conversational rolling maul with a crowd of drinkers from Cavann, more pints, a slight timewarp, a Lebanese meal and then the Trinity City hotel bar where a small cluster from the university music department sat in front of 10 empty bottles of wine, before ordering another two.
A conversation about the liturgical merits of Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford was fiercely underway before one of them fell off his pouffe.
I decided enough was enough, pledged my lifelong friendship with Damon and hit the sack.
In the morning, my French girlfriend, Ana, wafted in from Nice and we were about to explore Ireland’s Atlantic coast. She is a teetotaller and takes no nonsense, so I was on parade sharpish, eating fruit with muesli and zeal.
But I just wish she had come to Dublin earlier. It’s a fine and inspiring place for a weekend — even for someone who only drinks sparkling water.
TRAVEL FACTS
AER LINGUS (aerlingus.com) flies London Heathrow or Gatwick to Dublin from £35 return. Rooms at the Trinity City Hotel
(trinitycityhotel.com, 00353 1648 1000) cost from £124. More information at ireland.com