Dublin 3

July 8, 2009

Had no theater tickets last night, so it was a pub crawl. Started on Capel Street, at MacNeill’s. Stuart the bartender was flirting with me. Stuart is about 6' 7" and burly as a (very fit) bear, two things that I like. Anyway, we had a long chat about travel and hurling (he played for a Dublin club team, and we watched the Dublin/ Kilkenny match replayed on the TV), about Germany and Ireland in WWII, and then about the Christian Brothers. He went to a CB school, and they seem to have been as bad as recent fiction and current media have portrayed them, bullies, cowards, pederasts not out of warped longing, but out of direct cruelty. Once their hurley team did something to embarrass their headmaster, who lined the boys up and slapped them across the face with his ecclesiastical ring, cutting, maybe scarring their faces. Stuart said, “If you hit me, sir, I will hit you back.” The response was, “I’d like to see you try.” The headmaster struck him, and Stuart broke his jaw. The garda were told the whole story–after the headmaster lied about it–and the truth and Stuart’s six bigger-than-he-brothers brought things to an acceptable end. Two American kids came in, students from Nashville. They thought they were going to get jobs in Ireland after they graduate, and live here. Who knows? They were still in the asking-how-much-it-costs stage. He looked disturbingly like me, and she was clearly a forceful feminist, sending him signals that he was in some anxiety to obey. We made loose plans to see the Jameson distillery together. On to the Boar;s Head, which has a boar’s head, and where great lumps of Irish galoots were debating one another with smiles on their faces. Wandered Temple Bar for a while, then on to the George, which has redecorated again, and which was unimaginably boring. Staggered home laden with Bulmers. It was pathetic as a pub crawl goes, but there is time to make amends.

Found my feet headed west this morning, so I steered down Mary’s Street, past the brick warehouses, which must be the larders of the whole city (and where, I see now, I was mugged a few summers ago), to the Jameson distillery. Jessica our guide revealed that of the 200 Irish distilleries in the 18th century, four were left in 1970, and, furthermore, like Guinness, Jameson is no longer made in Dublin at all, but, along with all the other brands of Irish whisky, at some monstrous factory in Cork. It was an informative tour. For the first time I have a clear idea what malt is. We met Smithy, the champion mouser cat from seventy years ago, stuffed and set to watch over his former domain. I was chosen one of the whisky testers, which meant I was part of a taste test comparing Scottish, Irish, and American whiskies. There are real taste differences. I actually preferred the Jack Daniels, but it wasn’t the place to say such a thing. Hated the scotch. Long chat with the beautiful Breton girl who brought me salad, and who wrote down details of a festival in her homeland which I may actually attend one day. I have always gotten along with French people I have met elsewhere; maybe that is a sign.