Dublin

Harpist at the Guinness Storehouse. Photos by David Lansing.

We’re late for the Guinness tour but no matter. As Mr. Lynch says, he’s gone through so many brewery tours it would be quicker for him to make the beer than learn about how it’s done. So pop up the stairs to the Perfect Pint Bar. Greeted by music from a pale, freckled woman in a green silk dress strumming a harp. And waiters offering up the dark stout in champagne flutes. What’s this then? asks Mr. Lynch. A Black Velvet says the young waiter.

Oh shiite, says Mr. Lynch. I can’t drink this stuff. Can I get just a regular pint?

I take Mr. Lynch’s flute as well as another for me. Champagne and Guinness. Better than it sounds. After a second sip, quite nice actually. Goes down easy. Lovely view of Dublin from here. Or it would be if it weren’t raining again, gray puffy clouds sitting atop the Wicklow Mountains like Irish caps. Mountains, indeed. Hills we’d call them back home. Small hills.

Finish my two drinks and then make off with another as we’re herded like well-dressed sheep up the escalator to the Gravity Bar at the top of the building. Panoramic 360 degree views of what? Gray neighborhoods beneath us. Can’t even make out the Liffey though it must be close enough that if you hurled a pint glass from here it would end with a splash in the river. Spires of a church rise up out of the muck. Is that Christ Church then?

The summer's gone and all the flowers are dying for the Irish Sopranos. Photo by David Lansing.

Salad served as a short, stout man holding a pint in his right hand makes a speech about tourism. Something about something about something. Hurry up, man, and make your toast. The gals are waiting. The three of them. The Irish Sopranos, standing patiently on a low stage in front of the window that should be showing the Wicklow Mountains in the background if it wasn’t so gray out.

They’ve sung at Carnegie Hall, says the red-nosed man, and are Irish treasures—Wendy, Kay, and Deirdre. And wouldn’t you know it? Their first song is Danny Boy. I groan. Mr. Lynch gives me a sharp kick to the shin. I hate this song, I whisper. Doesn’t matter, says Mr. Lynch. Mind your manners.

Right. So here we go. Oh, Danny Boy. Pipes calling, valleys hushed. ‘Tis you, ‘tis you. Every woman in the place misty eyed and crying. And I just want to hurl. Thunderous applause. Standing ovation. Can’t beat that Danny Boy. And as Wendy and Kay and Deirdre launch into cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O, I slip away from the table and back down to the Perfect Pint to have a quiet drink far from the ghostly cries of sweet Molly Malone.

A busy Dublin street. Photo by David Lansing.

White haired gent, food stains blotching his rumpled shirt, shifts and straightens up quite suddenly, as if suddenly awakened from a nap, as Mr. O’Connor and I hurry into the back of his taxi. How are ya, boss? he says, stretching, patting the front of his shirt as if looking for a pack of lost smokes.

Guinness Storehouse, says Mr. O’Connor. Gives me a look and rolls his eyes.

Traffic thick, nothing moving, but never mind. It’s a lovely evening. So light out, even though it’s past seven. Driver gassing on about Patrick Kavanagh but I’m hearing little of it, watching the young Dubs marching home. Two colleens on bikes, skirts hiked up mid-thigh, thread their way through the stalled cars. One on a cell phone. Imagine that; dancing through traffic so close one man could reach out his side window and open another man’s back door, and the thin girl with long flowing red hair maneuvers with one hand on her bike while no doubt discussing weekend plans with her lad. Lovely.

Where the fish ‘n’ chips shop is used to be a bookstore, says our driver, rambling on to nobody. Owned by two spinster sisters. Kavanagh would roam the store and take any book he desired and the sisters never saw his light-handedness, for he was a poet don’t you know.

You saying he stole their books, Mr. O’Connor wonders.

That’s what I’m told, says the driver. And if there’s a lie in my story, sure it wasn’t myself that composed it.

That’s something, isn’t it? A taxi driver telling us rich stories about a long-dead poet. Get that in New York, do you?

Fifteen, twenty minutes later and we come around the corner and there’s our hotel in front of us. Bloody hell, says Mr. O’Connor. We’ve spent twenty minutes just going around the block. Thought you’d like to see a bit of the city, says the driver. Ah god, rants Mr. O’Connor. You’ve had a bit of the gargle, haven’t you?

No extra charge, says the driver. Now then, was it the Guinness Storehouse you wanted?

And once again we lurch down the street past St. Stephen’s Green, this time twenty minutes late for dinner.

Bust of James Joyce in St. Stephen's Green. Photo by David Lansing.

The rain stops. Not really rain anyway, is it? Heavy fog? Light mist? Just something to keep the grass green and the skin pale. For one solid minute the sun creeps out from behind a dark cloud like a child from behind his mother’s skirt.

It’s a lovely day, isn’t it? says the humped over man strolling with his hands clasped behind his back as if for ballast. Likely fall over on his face if he didn’t. He smiles a toothless grin at me, nods with his head towards a dark bust, a sheen of verdigris wrapped like a shawl around the shoulders.

James Joyce. The man himself. The humped old man moves on, satisfied. Well, now. Here you are. Looking worried. Or perhaps perplexed. At why Dubliners should take such pride in you when they practically forced you out of Ireland? It is amusing, don’t you think? They love writers; they hate writers. Love them when they’re dead; detest them when they’re alive. No more so than you, Old Boy. Wait. That’s not true. Oscar Wilde had an even harder time of it. Put into prison. For sodomy of all things. Clever stupid man. There’s an inscription here: “Crossing Stephen’s, that is my green.”

Something from Ulysses, I should think. Must read that again. Slog through the first bit until you get to Molly Malone. The tart with the cart. She must be nearby as well.

Must be going though. Looking for a lovely spot of lamb’s liver. For breakfast. You should understand that. And a nice cup of tea. Hot. With milk. What was it Seamus said? The best grass is in Ireland so the best cows are in Ireland so the best cream is in Ireland. Sure it’s so.

Here’s the Shelbourne then. That will do nicely. Lovely place. Do they serve breakfast? I ask the lad at the front door? Indeed, he says. In the Lord Mayor’s Lounge. I like that. This is where Ireland’s constitution was drafted by Michael Collins and his associates. Not the Lord Mayor’s Lounge, of course. But one of the rooms upstairs. Wonder if they still use it as a room? Should be a museum, I’d think.

Feel a bit under-dressed as I’m led to a wing-backed chair near the fireplace. Not peat. But cheery. Have you lamb’s liver? No, sir. Pity. The Limerick ham, then. And two eggs. Poached. And a pot of tea. Black or something herbal, sir? Black. With milk, of course. Very good sir. And toast? Yes, please.

No lamb but lovely anyway. Fatigue starting to settle on my shoulders. Fire, even in August, seems comforting. Might just fall asleep in my big chair waiting for my tea and Limerick ham. Why not?

The Fates in St. Stephen's Green. Please don't look at the children. No, really! Photo by David Lansing.

Should really try and stay awake, despite no sleep for a day or so, or tonight will be hell. Shower and a fresh shirt. Throw open the window to my stuffy room. Fresh air. A little misty rain. Lovely. Maybe go for a stroll. Back down Earlsfort to St. Stephen’s Green. Stop for a breakfast of fresh lamb’s liver and bacon should the opportunity arise.

Bono and The Edge are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they’re tucking in to a full Irish breakfast and a pot of tea. Tea sounds good. But first a walk around the Green.

Just inside the gate, looking sinister and cold, bronzed versions of the Fates. Moirae. Unmerciful crones deciding what’s to happen to me. In the back is Clotho, the spinner, and in front of her Lachesis, who doles out the lots, but the most terrible is the eldest, Atropus—like atropy?—who snips life short.

A plaque on the edge of the pond says the three sisters were a gift from the German people in thanks for Irish help to refugees after World War II.

An odd thank-you gift: three unmerciful women.

Still, worth a picture. Stand back a few feet and take in the lovely green hedges and lawn and big-leafed trees to soften the nasty women. But someone is yelling at me. Coming up the path. A yellow-vested toddler in each hand and more dancing around her, like small yellow chicks.

Stop! she screams. No pictures! Do you hear me! No pictures.

Odd. Is this woman a living representation of the Fates? Scurrying up to me she places a hand in front of my camera. No pictures! she shrilly screams for the umpteenth time.

Is it not allowed to take photos in the park? I ask.

You’re taking pictures of the children! she says. You can’t take pictures of the children!

I’m not interested in the children, I tell her. I’m taking a photo of the Fates.

Well, the children are in it. No pictures of the children. It’s against the law!

Really? It’s against the law in Ireland to take photos with children in them?

Not yet. But it will be shortly, she says. Because of the priests, she says angrily.

I’m not a priest.

No matter! No photos!

So I put my camera away and the shrill sister to the Fates moves along with her brood of yellow chicks. Which have been accidentally but inevitably captured a minute earlier. And here’s the photo for all to see, children and all. Please, just concentrate on the Fates. Pay no attention to the toddlers coming up the path. None at all. Look away. As are the Fates. Because, you know, the priests!

Bono and The Edge greet me in front of the Conrad Hotel in Dublin. Photo by David Lansing.

Shortly after my flight touched down in Dublin a little after 7 in the morning (just love those red-eye flights, don’t you?), I got a text message from Bernard (who pronounces his name BER-nerd) saying he wouldn’t be picking me up at the airport and taking me to the hotel. “The options are a taxi or an airbus service which will take you to the city centre. But I have some special guests waiting for you at the hotel.”

Damn.

Up and over the traffic lanes to the other side of the airport, dragging my duffel behind me, and down the stairs, bumpety, bumpety, bump, swollen sleepy head looking for the taxi queue in a fine Irish misty morn when right in front of me just getting ready to depart is the AirCoach bus.

“Do you go anywhere near the Conrad?” I asked the driver as he was closing the baggage hold.

“Block away,” he said.

Fine, then. City centre and return, please. “Fourteen euros.”

Climb aboard and drag my tired carcass to the back of the bus and with head pressed against the cool glass, count the stops: Quinns Pub, O’Connell Street, Trinity College, Kildare, and finally me: St. Stephens Green. Raining, lightly, but I’m bushed and prefer a damp head to digging through my duffel for an umbrella. Besides, didn’t the fella say it was just a block away?

Up Earlsfort and past a lovely little café—I can smell the buttered toast and sweet scent of tea, but no time for that now; what I need is a bed, and sure enough, there’s the Conrad, flags hanging limp in the rain, and two figures smiling and pointing at me as if they’ve been waiting all morning for my arrival. It’s Bono with bee-eye sunglasses and a jaw that juts out from his chin like a diving platform, and The Edge, all perplexed and moody-eyed. Bigger than life. Really bigger than life.

“Hey, Dave!” they call as I walk by, stunned.

“How do you know my name?”

“BER-nerd,” says Bono. “BER-nerd said to say hello.”

Greetings from U2. And so begins my stay in Ireland.