On the Republic's Roads
"Its high wooden arches gave a sort of perpetually renewed, beautiful life to the thousands of books that fell in the stacks beneath. Some were bound with white ribbon to prevent them tattering, others were the size of superdictionaries. Mahoganies and beiges and browns of many a hue, for 80 metres along the length of the walls, and about 50 metres upwards, but you felt it would well have gone on and on with the right placement of mirrors, a la some Babelian, Borgesian dreamscape."
I’m half-inclined to talk about the journey to the airport, the mist on England’s green and pleasant land, the rolling fields and yawning structures of Bristol in the bus rearview. I’m half-inclined to pen an ode to the ham and cheese toastie and sprightly coffee once we were past the gates, or the 10am beer that only really ever flies when you’re flying. I’m half-inclined but saner heads prevail. It really does beg the question: what constitutes the start of the getaway, doesn’t it? Is it once you touch down on foreign (but not foreign) soil, when you’re actually finally abroad (but not abroad)?
So there’s plenty going on that we can skirt over, but the one thing there certainly is not, seemingly, bafflingly, is a check of our Covid passes. Georgie’s quite remarkable panic at 7am was all for nothing. We touched down in Dublin at, say, 12:30, and were in the city by 1.30.
First things first: when you’ve got a finite time away from your hometown, city or whatever, there is no scope to be dallying at road-crossings. You have to drain every last bit of holiday out of your holiday, and you’re not getting that playing trepidation at a red man. We’ve just gone upwards of 18 months without the joy of air travel, without the splendour of exploration further afield, and I’ll be damned if I’m taking a slow stroll cos I’m allowed to rather than a brisk jog because I took the risk. We went on this way for the duration. Enough said on the topic, frankly.
The timings had all coincided with our check in, which was a walk to the Northside and up past Mountjoy Square, which we’d read a wee bit about, and which, fittingly, had some fireworks being set off within its grounds just shy of 2pm. Carnival atmosphere. Sam and Georgie are about. Steady yourselves.
The room was nice. The orange sofa was nice. The weather was nice that day, too, as I remember. The only available slot for the Guinness Storehouse happened to be 2:45pm on that trusty nice nice Friday, and so we scuttled down there, walked around, read some bits, failed to remember the 11 stages of brewing within 3 minutes of having read them, gasped at our man Arthur and his beau Olivia Whitmore having 21 (twenty one!) children, gasped more at the subsequent mortality rate, and then spent more time than both of those collective gasps trying to figure out why the fuck the woman on the screen was a doctor. Got to be something about childbirth? Got it. The aroma room was fun. We tried to get high off the fumes with big dirty inhalations, but were scuttled through to a dark oak room and out the other side. The advertising section was cool, as well — I remember one particular quip about a woman not needing a man, cos a fish doesn’t need a bicycle, and there was a big human-size mechanical fish actually pedalling away right before us, static and bemused. Eventually, we were in the Gravity Bar, overlooking the city, taking stock of our arrival, and enjoying our first delicious Guinness of many delicious Guinnu (that’s the approved plural for it don’t test me). Dublin looked resplendent in the sunshine.
We headed back down, took some tourist pictures, and worked our way over to the Brazen Head — the oldest pub in Dublin, apparently. Nothing old or stale or unsatisfying about their chips; there’s some free information for you. We asked a guy next to us what the custom is for reaching a satisfying point on your Guinnu. He said it was to split the G, which is one gulp further down than us appropriating pigs have grown accustomed to (between the N and harp). I didn’t have the heart to attempt it in front of him. There was a stone on the wall that was as accurate and undying in its account of the weather as the oldest of methodologies. Stone gone = tornado. The rest of the evening played out in the characterful, bustling, series of streets that constitutes Temple Bar. There’s awning and shrubbery and louts wearing tracksuits, past plenty of eateries and even more ‘traditional’ bars, where they make you queue and show passes until it hits an hour of darkness wherein no one really cares, and busy gets busier, louder, funner. We managed to get a seat in le originale — THE Temple Bar. The one. There were a duo playing tunes, and once we’d managed to relocate away from the breeze and next to a bar perch, we listened to them turn out some bangers. The first one was Floyd. Can you imagine! People flickered and floated and got raucous, whilst we ourselves moved through a haze of Guinness and wine and whiskey and gin, with rich cigar smoke floating amidst the heads of many a jovial soul. We hadn’t eaten a whole lot, and by 9pm, understandably, were feeling rather loose. A catalogue of calamities left us eventually getting a McDonald’s rather than a delicious Irish staple, but you can rest assured that this was our one and only culinary mishap of the entire trip — in many ways, it’s good to get it out the way, isn’t it? Anyway, we got in this queue to scran. The bouncer then told the queue that there was no chance they were getting in. Most people in the queue left, at which point we said ‘we’re just two poor souls, can we go in’, and he responded ‘yea alright then, fair play’. Georgie’s half-eaten burger was violently turned aside, and I regret that to this day. We stayed in there for about an hour — the final hour of the night’s live music, no less — listening to pop hits interspersed with smoother numbers, all of which got us rolling and swaying into a nice harmonious boogie. There were a group of absolute sloshers, within which one slosher in particular stood out, and we observed him for a while, much to our amusement. The last two whiskies were probably not needed to be fair, we were both well oiled. By the time we made the pilgrimage to Gardiner Street Upper, past this ginormous pointy city centrepiece and past our marker cathedral, we both lay down on the bed and dozed off almost instantaneously. There was a small but notable pool of drool on my stomach when we came around and headed back off for the kip proper. It had been a fittingly busy, and rightfully decadent, first day in the city.
Saturday was a right royal hoot. No two ways about it.
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We got up a bit laboured. Tea, coffee, body cleanse, enema, quick cry, many laugh, and we’re out. Your quintessential holiday morning. There was a popular brunch place I’d found called Brother Hubbard, which I’ve since learnt was actually on Somebody Feed Phil, which I do believe makes me and Georgie famous, or something similar. Anyway, it was so good there. I had a poached eggs, baba ghanoush and crumbled feta sort of number, and G had a sweet piece, with honey and brioche french toast and fruits. Both were delectable. As were the coffees. It’s a disproportionate amount of page time to give to a brunch, so I’ll move on. Aware of our own debauchery the day prior, we figured we’d have a mooch and try some culture on for size. The Book of Kells tour was not available until later, so we booked it and moved on to a very sweet area further south than Temple Bar. The streets were adorned with cafe dwellers in the post-noon sunshine, and pubs were starting to take on patrons amidst the patisseries. 1pm rolled around and we’d been ambling for a while, so there was little option but to get a Guinnu on board. Can’t remember the name of the gaff, but its walls were wrought with pictures of yesteryear, and that antiquity is reflected on many of Dublin’s streets — cool post-gothic architecture, old brickwork, reappropriated public houses, factories, mini-mills. It’s all very pleasing to the eye. It was time to go and look at a giant library. It was giant, and it was a library, and it was really rather beautiful, in fairness. We bypassed the scripture heavy segment regarding the actual Book of Kells, and headed upstairs to The Long Room. Never even knew it existed! Pleasant, touristy surprise. Its high wooden arches gave a sort of perpetually renewed, beautiful life to the thousands of books that fell in the stacks beneath. Some were bound with white ribbon to prevent them tattering, others were the size of superdictionaries. Mahoganies and beiges and browns of many a hue, for 80 metres along the length of the walls, and about 50 metres upwards, but you felt it would well have gone on and on with the right placement of mirrors, a la some Babelian, Borgesian dreamscape. Ladders were plumped in the openings, waiting for some obscure request from some pretentious student. The rest of us just meandered beneath them, snapping photographs and putting our proverbial fingers in the marble noses of immortalised patriarchy. Overdue a Guinnu by this time, weren’t we. I made Georgie do some star jumps in the pretty University square, and then we headed back to our place for some gins and a freshen up. We headed out to a speakeasy, and by speakeasy I mean the old woman’s funeral. The Little Pig. Didn’t recognise any of the cocktails on the menu, and that was fine, because all the ones we did opt for were bloody delicious. The place was how you would expect, aesthetically — red velvet and dark wood awning and small multi-coloured lights lining the rims of the room. It was bloody great in there, and the two people doing the lord’s good work had a pretty outlandish, Irish brand of humour that sent us further on our way into the night. By the time we got outside it was dark, and it was busy, and we were wonky. We’d booked a steakhouse, no less. Let me largely bypass this next period of time by summarising as such: the steak was up there with the best I’ve ever had. There was a lot of it. We drank wine as we ate, and got more wonky as we got more full, and by the time there were a few scraps left, both G and I were pretty spent. Thereafter, we commented on people on dates, laughed uncontrollably at each other, chat shite to the waiters, and stumbled out the door. Great bloody success if you ask me — good content from Brookwood. There must be an internal 11pm deadline still, because by the time we got back onto the streets most of the partying was happening in clusters around buskers. Two different crowds we joined to enjoy some tunes. The first was cut short by some little shitpricks setting fire to binbags and thinking they were sick. The second was cut short by my body telling me to cut it short. It was fun! I say we passed out on the Friday, but that passing out did not compare in any way to the passing out that happened when we plonked on the bed this chilly, windy Saturday. Fully clothed, we roused at 3am and stumbled around the place — it is truly a wonder of human circumstance that we didn’t feel ropey the next day.
Sunday. God’s day. Blessed be. His one and true son died for our sins. He taught us the way and spawned millennia of fabricated absurdity so that we may wake up, seek a bagel, fail, and wait for 20 minutes to be seen by a truly miserable, inefficient Europcar lady. Good Jesus and all of his hearty followers roused and campaigned and delivered, for we did actually get the car eventually, which is what the traditional rules of transaction dictate. Little i10, wasn’t it. Paddy! The drive down took us out of the city, onto the motorway, and then onto some toll-less minor roads, which took us to the heart of a village that looked like something out of Mr. Bean. Ghostly vacant. There was a small shop I popped into to ask for the bathroom. Permission was granted, and I was guided into the desolate and deserted boozer next door. After reliving my childlike bladder I proceeded to spill soap all down and lose in battle against the most raucous tap in recent memory. Exited the village with some crisps and a soft drink. Can’t tell you whether that was the highlight, or whether it was rather the winding roads and greenery with stunning farmhouses all around, or the latter stages of the 3hr drive, where there were abundant waters and little cottages and cafes that lined the way. Cobh! What a pretty, pleasant little place. It’s south east of Cork, almost on an archipelago, and on a map, zoomed in, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was of Scandinavian flavour. We parked up behind the Cathedral, which was inland and uphill from our place of residence — the Artist’s House. The sun was beating down from the sky, which is completely incongruous but offers context to our being welcomed in and shown the ropes of this fella’s kooky abode. Diverse, vibrant artwork adorned near enough every patch of his walls, from the lower level makeshift studio, up the stairwells, around the bathroom, to our own space. Our own space was cosy, cool, but also entirely clustered, with age-old board games, binoculars, empty jam jars and patches of fabric jostling for real estate. John, his name was. He was something of a walking talking manifestation of this kind of kaleidoscopic decor. We chatted to him a little about the area, restaurants, history, you know the ones. He also spoke of his work — which spanned various styles, subject matters, and degrees of neuroses — and how business had been affected by Covid. As he showed us our room, he pointed over to Spike Island — ‘Ireland’s Alcatraz’ — just across the water, home to a number of riots and stories over the years. As we set up to go and do the classic post-arrival wander, he told us he’d had a party the night before so was a ‘bit fucked’. Right on, John.
Did I mention how great Cobh was? If I didn’t that’s a huge oversight. You’ve worked hard enough, long enough, and smart enough to be granted that information from the jump. After leaving bedraggled John to sip water and chew on bananas, we walked down to the water’s edge and looked out at the sailboats. Round the way, at the bandstand, there were some fine folk young and old, playing some delightful ditties also young and old. Georgie’s name was Hank and I’d had my changed by deed poll to Marvin, so we actually didn’t have much choice other than to get some munch in. Wasn’t much, but we were, as Homer put it in the Iliad, ‘tided over by softcore saturates’. More an accompaniment to the henceforth gins and Guinnu than anything else….
It was maybe 3pm, and it was warm, and the colourful little houses and shops offset the blue sky just lovely. Why wouldn’t you have a tipple? We went to a pub called the Roaring Donkey which was up a giant hill. Having your fitness shortfalls exposed like that in the middle of a right nice holiday wasn’t welcome, but it was fine cos there was a sort of musky, wood-soaked boozer waiting at the end of it, where locals and travellers sat and mumbled kind things to each other. We got speaking to a fella — didn’t catch his name — who had spent 20 years working in London as an engineer; his family and his wife’s family had always lived in and around Cobh, and the retreat it afforded him in retirement, the sense of home and peace and awe was gorgeous to hear. Dude also gave us numerous tips for our forthcoming trip to the mountains. His son tried to steal his pint.
Some doozy goals went in on the screen. I had another Guinnu. Georgie had a slice of orange in her Hendricks. We got pissed. Then Mega Meanies made an appearance. What the fuck are Mega Meanies? I heard you mumbling it under your breath there. Well, strap in, heathens. Mega Meanies are like the ultimate crisp hybrid, full of tantalising texture and fabulous flavour, but made alllllll the better by the fact that the packet was actually full of them. You just don’t get that anymore. If you started a little crisp farm and bred Monster Munch with Space Invaders, NikNaks and Wotsits, you’d end up with the revered, forever remembered, beautiful single pack of Mega Meanies we had. Back at the room, we looked at John’s artwork around the room, noting how different each piece was from its neighbour — sign of an ever-evolving craftsman, if you ask me. Our meal in the evening was nice. The Quays. Seafood chowder, scallops, grilled hake, veggies and garnishes, sticky toffee pudding, bottle of red. The job, my good sirs and madams, is a good’n. We played a few games of chess afterwards, which was lovely, and thus to sleep most contented and warm, guarded and overseen by a hungover Irishman’s crude abode security, unperturbed and at absolute peace bar THE MOST UNNECESSARILY LOUD CATHEDRAL BELLS THIS SIDE OF ANYWHERE. I wasn’t mad about it. Character building. It wasn’t a great sleep from me to be fair, but it’s hard to be anything short of fine in Cobh cos Cobh is so damn fine.
You’re doubtless wondering what the morning had in store for us, and I can tell you this, free of charge, 0% interest, no fine print: good things. We roused and packed and reflected on the day prior. As I stepped out front to have a morning cigarette in the clear sunshine (I know!), John called to me through the door down the way to tell me he was sat on the toilet. Nice touch. Homely. We walked to a cafe at the small square one over from the down the road where there was another little square of wonky shops and homecook eateries. The place at the square beyond that square, where we ended up, you see, well — they had bagels. We’d been in hot pursuit of bagels for a wee while. Smoked salmon was at the crux of this fever. We got what we were after, and we got it in a big way. Smoked salmon and cream cheese and red onion bagel: check. Bacon, cream cheese and chive bagel: check. Couple of ginormous, almost intimidating coffees: check. Private, catholic woman hell bent on sharing many a tale of yesteryear on the seats just outside: check. We walked east across the coast, for we’d not ventured that way. Found a little opening by the water that looked out across Spike Island, with the lapping waves hitting algae and muck down the way. We ate and drank there and soaked in the rays for a good half hour — it was stunning. From there we strolled to the Titanic Memorial Garden. Cobh was the final port before that first and last journey. It picked up about 120 passengers there. 70 or so perished. There was a glass memoriam with these passengers’ names on, and a few placards marking the history of the most famous shipwreck of all time. Conspiracies, press coverages and the likes. Interestingly, the Managing Director of the White Star Line — the moustached fellow whose seeming cowardice is reflected in the ‘97 picture — spent many years following the sinking, sitting and reflecting on that cruel fate in Cobh. There were conflicting accounts of his life and memory within a metre of one another. We ambled back, said goodbye and many thanks to John, who was wearing pyjamas and brushing his teeth, before getting in Paddy and heading off to Cork.
I’ll keep it brief: the English Market there is vibrant and quite excellent. Loads of fresh foods and vegetables and meats and fishes and chutneys and breads. Aye indeed, dear reader, all the good stuff. We must have rounded it, buying produce and goods, for over an hour, shaping ourselves up for a delicious little spread that evening. We then spent the next two hours walking down pretty side streets and by the riverways, none of which took us to a fruitful ATM just as we could have really done with a fruitful ATM — we needed cash for the car park. We eventually got it. I can imagine you now, wiping sweat from your brow, permitting your heart rate to slow as you recover from that high-octane account of a car park plight. What I will say is that I’m super glad we opted for Cobh rather than moving from one city to another and ending up in Cork for a night. If you too are looking to head south from Dublin and explore the gorgeous nether regions of the Republic, don’t forgo Cork entirely, but don’t sleep on regions further towards the terrific country’s soggy trotters. During our trip, we heard magnificent things about places like Waterford, Kilkenny, and the Inishowen Peninsula; pity we had finite time. Some microcosm.
En route back up the West Coast, it rained. It rained hard, and it rained hard the whole way. That’s only marginally unfair — for one half-hour period, the good ol’ sky flickered between drizzle and full on pissdown. Did I mention that it didn’t stop? I didn’t do a wee the whole way either because the dank Irish clouds had absorbed all the liquid from my bladder and used it to ensure it rained hard the whole way. The only other thing worth mentioning during this journey was the A-Z of sex positions. The standouts for me were: ‘Eagle’, ‘Gravy’, ‘Hairy’ and ‘Koala’. Please good goodness and good golly let them happen one day. We passed into County Wicklow, through Ashford, and up the country road to our little cottage by about 6pm. Blanaid and Peter welcomed us in the way that you’d expect kindly, middle-aged, distant but faithfully devoted relatives to welcome you after a lengthy absence. They were so full of love and warmth and information. We only engaged with them for like twenty minutes, but I felt more warm, rounded and respected as a human being with each second of it. They were away the next day onwards. Peter came through with oil and butter and gate instructions. Blanaid came through with being a diminutive little dream. The cottage was beyond all description, which renders this whole soiree obsolete. Did it even ever happen?
The most homely place you can find without it being your home. The room upstairs was essentially the higher reaches of a converted garage, but it was doused in this light wood and felt intimate. Blessed be the one hour blast as well, a glorious little setting on the thermostat. This little rubber button saved us a few times from being found by lovely Peter and lovely Blanaid as a lovely dead pile of pale English rigor mortis. We sort of mooched hither and thither, eating our delicious cheeses and salami and sundrieds and bread and artichokes and olives and a blackberry and dark chocolate cannoli, and what I’ve just done there is not condense our consumption in any way whatsoever but actually name the whole lot we’d bought at Cork market. Then we must have just listened to some tunes and fallen asleep, in what can only be described as the comfiest bed ever designed, developed and executed by anyone, anywhere, in the brief history of mankind on this mental orb. Needless to say, we slept well. The next day was just as good. Better, even.
When we and my lover first started hanging out, the outdoors was our haven. For the most part, pubs, bars and attractions were closed, so we went on big strolls and hikes every weekend and got to know eachother. In the evenings we’d eat good food and drink good drink and enjoy the company. Tuesday, then, was a fitting, beautiful and extended return to such times. Imagine the perfect day. Now take your mind out the gutter, you pig, add some greenery, patches of sunshine, plenty of flowing water, and a wild wee of unprecedented splendour, and you’re close to what we experienced on Tuesday. Our breakfast was Irish smoked salmon, avocado and asparagus, with seeded sourdough toast. I could stop there and it’d be a winner. But no. No! We headed off to Glendalough, and followed the white route round the lake, up past Pelanassis Waterfall, through sun-doused forestry, along a ridge path, and down round the other side. After the first stretches, the signage systems subsided and so we needn’t pay heed to the confusing colour codes and erratic arrows. We could put one foot in front of the other. It was taxing, windy, stunning. We stopped for sandwiches and to perch and take in the perpetual whistling of the foamy waters. The water was quite fast moving, through a combination of the downhill stream and the pulsing winds, and it lapped just short of us as we sat by a rock on the side and admired the scene. We must have been walking and looking on for just short of four hours, before stopping for a hot drink and a bite at a kooky, musky spot down the road. We got back to the cottage and sorted ourselves out (cleaned mud off our ankles, leaving everything else exactly as it was) before heading out for a decadent little evening at the Chester Beatty Inn. Now I like chicken wings, and this place had some absolutely killer chicken wings. They captured my soul and my heart. Georgie had a fried Brie starter. When she ordered it I simultaneously felt full of love and full of curiosity as to the location of the nearest A&E. The lady is a heathen for cheese, and I’m about it. We both had a Guinness pie/hotpot for main. It was so so so so good. Fresh roasted seasonal veg with plenty of potatoes a few ways to see us through the sheer indulgence….until desert. Another sticky toffee pudding, is it. We were both a bit slumped afterwards. Or maybe my memory is skewed on that front, and it was actually just me, given that I had to try both a cigarette and a sit on the toilet to ease the languor around my body. When we got back to the cottage, we sat and rolled around like satisfied seals. What a day!
Wednesday was about packing, eating weird leftovers, decanting gin, and setting off to Dublin Airport. The guy at Europcar was a modest little jobsworth, so we had to do an extra circular to fill up like 11 euros of petrol, but it gave me extra time in the streams of noon to drink about a pint of G&T and end up quite tipsy. Holibobs. Let’s hear it for it. Tell you what is sobering though — my chutney got taken off me. No liquids or pastes or delicious Irish fruit chutneys, apparently. Must have missed that on the little reminders pre-security. Fuming. We had a final Guinness and a meal deal. Could’ve done that every day and been content (granted, of course, that the ‘snack’ was Mega Meanies), so you can imagine how elated we felt with how the five day escapade had panned out.
Unreal.
Anywho, back to it, albeit with itchy feet.