DUBLIN IS on fire. The city is pumping more barrels of energy per day than Venezuela spends on petro-diplomacy. The bars and restaurants are packed seven days a week while hotels and hostels hang up NO VACANCY signs at the weekends. And it’s not just tourists that come out to play.
Away from the holiday resort feel of Temple Bar and nearer to Grafton Street, Dubliners are out in full force every night drinking and eating. From the plainest traditional pubs to the swankiest champagne-guzzling hotel bars, the place is a-buzzing.
Dublin’s rise from starving cat to roaring tiger caught me completely off-guard. I arrived from Belfast late on a Saturday evening without a place to stay. Things got progressively desperate as the friendly light of the city clocked out and I had yet to find a pillow for the night. It’s amazing how your red lines become increasingly porous as circumstance takes a quick trip downhill. After being rejected from every mid-range budget B&B, I turned to the youth hostels, reluctantly ready to share a room with 15 Spanish teenagers. Only they wouldn’t have me either.
Minutes away from blaming myself for being homeless, I found room at the inn run by an enterprising Mr O’ Shea. He offered a take-it-or-leave-it rip-off rate which I took. He then suggested if I liked blondes to drop my bags and hit the town. I wanted to open a discourse on the finer points of dark Mediterranean beauties but kept zip, unsure of his relationship with the fair-haired receptionist.
After two weeks in Belfast soaking up a heavy political climate, Saturday night Dublin provided some light relief. However, the Irish weather, comprising four seasons in one day, had given me a Man Cold which I couldn’t shake off. Feeling rough and feverish, I had a few hot whiskeys, which only exacerbated my ‘other worldly’ mindset. Floating from one bar to the next, it occurred to me the inn-keeper’s blondes all spoke very good Polish, a sign of the rapid inward migration flows experienced by the Celtic Tiger.
At ‘The Mezz’, a live retro-rock band was playing to a packed house of mostly tourists. The lead singer, a local lad and evident Beatles fan, was also the band’s song writer. He had the smallest ego in the industry, happily playing crowd requests for standard hit covers instead of his own, pretty decent stuff. I talked to him during the break, telling him I was a journalist interested in his music. I even bought the CD but my efforts to perhaps share a little ego were fruitless. Chirpy as a born-again Christian singing Christmas carols, the man’s modesty would not budge an inch.
The fever had peaked by this point so I slipped out and headed for bed. My salvation room was built like a doll house. There was plenty of space but everything inside was the mini-me equivalent of its original size. The shower cubicle was so tight, I had to get in sideways. The bed so narrow, every time I turned, I head-butted the bedside table on either side. I couldn’t even see the 12-inch TV touching the ceiling in the room’s corner. So much for the 20 euro deposit on the remote control.
The next morning, I walked to Trinity College, film site of the fantastic Educating Rita. On the way I passed the great spike on O’ Connell Street. This towering silver monument shone all the way from the foot of the General Post Office to the heavens. Bringing me back down to earth was a statue of big Jim Larkin, a trade union leader during Ireland’s independence movement. With his arms wide open, Larkin addressed the crowds, encouraging the down-trodden that strength was a state of mind: “The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.”
Further up, an electronic screen containing a walking man grabbed my attention. I tried to match his pace, reducing my speed walk to a slow motion amble. For a while I felt as if the world was racing to its end and I, a momentary witness, watched from the cracks of the pavements. The inanity of the electric walking man shone a spotlight on Nicosia and the lack of dreams and dreamers.
I’d been told you could only find real Irish charm outside Dublin but this was refuted on my second day in the city. I swapped lunchtime for a pint of Guinness and a glance at Liverpool on the telly. They were in top form. An old man sitting on the bar stool next to me struck up a conversation about nothing in particular. Within five minutes we were mates and when a friend called to ask me where I was, he jumped off his stool and rushed outside to find the name of the bar.
This was a running theme in my travels. There never had to be a smart, witty or meaningful entry point to any conversation. Talking was an end in itself. And so, everyday I would speak with people I’d never met before about everything from the lack of disparity in lagers to the rise of Islam and the death of Veronica Guerin, the fearless journalist killed for her investigation into Dublin’s drug underworld.
One sunny afternoon, I was taking pictures of Guerin’s statue near the Chester Beatty library. A voice from behind said: “Looks a lot like her, you know.” It was a delicate old lady with a bobble hat, sitting with her shopping bags on a park bench.
She went on to tell me about the Anglican decision to allow women priests and how many Anglicans, appalled by the decision, converted to Catholicism. “In order to redress the balance, I decided to convert to the Church of Ireland (Protestantism). They have a lovely Christmas service,” she said.
As long as I was open to the world, the Irish would never leave me lonely or wanting for conversation. Of course there were times when dialogue proved more challenging than Korean peace negotiations. Like the Kerry farmer who spent 10 minutes telling me a story, the only words of which I understood were ‘Post Office’. And then there was the homeless drunk outside Gertrude’s in Dublin who left me speechless.
I was in the process of devouring a rhubarb crumble when out of the blue he came up and said: “You are from Liverpool.” I was dumbfounded, having been born and raised there, though since lost the accent. “And I’ll tell you something else, S and M,” he slurred. The initials of my first and middle names.
The next week, I scouted the area for the telepathic drunk. When I found him, he asked for a euro to buy a can of lager. I gave it to him, excitedly asking if he remembered me and where I was from.
“You, er, Spain? No, sorry, I must have been drunk.”
I was a little deflated, but my search had taken me to the same spot where I last saw him. It was a sign. I sat down and ordered a rhubarb crumble.
