Meet you behind the bike-shed.

In Dublin's fair city...

After a full Irish breakfast on Sunday, I decide to be a full Ireland tourist for the day. 7 years I lived in Ireland and not once did I do the tourist trail in Dublin – I’m a disgrace. But first a wee lie-down to let the brekkie settle. Oh look – footy on TV…

Up Eustace Street and the open-top tourist bus is already there – handy. One circuit round their route is a good start. Dublin is quite compact. I notice the circular bar on top of the Guinness brewery tourist centre looks rather like a head on a pint – nice touch!

A quick 'warmer' in the Bruxelles bar (I remember that from the 70s), and it’s down to a dark and dingy Republican bar on Wicklow Street to talk about rebellion… ‘The 1916 Rebellion Tour’ is a 2-hour walk around key spots in that rebellion, but starts downstairs in a dingy bar with an introduction and some scene-setting from our tour guide. He turns out to be an incredibly lively, loquacious and interesting guide, and definitely a rebel. He also looks uncannily like Elvis Costello. He carries a leather shoulder bag – jeez, he’s opening it, has he got a pistol in there…? Ah, no – it’s copies of his book. Good fun, highly informative, and he does a great job. If you’re ever in Dublin I highly recommend it, and I hope you get the same guide. He should be the one humming a few verses of ‘Oliver’s Army’ (while showing around the boys from the Mersey, and the Thames, and the Tyne…)

The one thing I will never understand – and he couldn’t explain – was why, after the always-doomed rebellion finally failed, the British leaders of the time (political or military) decided to execute the ring-leaders. Classic martyr-making if ever I saw it. I remember reading elsewhere that Dubliners were quite divided up to that point. Many were for the rebels, but many others were against them. Until the executions of the local boys started, that is.

Dubliners and words. Like ham and eggs. Or Guinness and oysters… Not just Joyce, Beckett, Wilde and Shaw (not a bad list) or even “yer only man” from the Rebellion Tour (who was not at all plain), but everyday Dubliners. The gift of the gab, served on Dublin wit. One speciality is rhyming slang which they seem to love even more than Cockneys. The statue of Molly Malone becomes “The Tart With The Cart”, “The Trollop With The Scallop”, or “The Dish With The Fish”. The Millenium Spire in O’Connell Street (a 120-metre slim spike of modern sculpture) is “The Stiletto In The Ghetto”, or “The Spire In The Mire”, “The Stiffy By The Liffey” - and several other even tastier versions.

Did you know that under British rule, the penalty for speaking Irish in Ireland could have been Transportation to Australia? And yet they have enriched English-language literature so much. Now that’s irony, for yeh, so it is…

So anyway…

After the tour, a steak ‘sambo’ with a drop (well, maybe three drops) of the black stuff while watching Spurs embarrass themselves on TV works just dandy, then back for another wee rest.

The tourist day picks up again in the evening by locating some ‘real’ (i.e. not Wild Rover/Fields of Athenry/Molly Malone/”join in…”) folk music in a small room above the equally small but fine Palace Bar (is this the one remaining ‘real’ pub in Temple Bar?). They haven’t started, so repair to the Oliver St. John Gogarty for an Irish Stew upstairs. Jeez – what a stew! Clearly there’s no famine just now, then…

Now there was a Dublin character. Gogarty was a throat surgeon, award-winning poet and writer, record-breaking athlete, politician, pioneering pilot and socialite. He once wrote a poem for Irish troops returning from the Boer War called 'Ode of Welcome'. Published in the ‘Irish Society’ journal, someone eventually realised that if you took the first letter of every line it spelled out the message ‘T h e w h o r e s w i l l b e b u s y’. He was some boy, eh?

Back to the Palace Bar for the music. Grand stuff altogether. Pipes, guitars, mandolin and Uilleann Pipes, and some good strong singing too. Some teenage girls from Boston USA shout out “sing some rebel songs!”. Sigh.

Still – what would a tourist day be without tourists?

Thats beautiful that is...

9:21 AM, Tuesday, October 28, 2008 .. Posted by TAFKARLC

thoroughly enjoyed the trip down memory lane from my own jaunts to Dublin, although clearly my knowledge of history is lacking....still, you're doing a fair job educating me mate, I love your blogs!!

Tour guide

7:39 AM, Tuesday, November 18, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

Aye very canny PS; the literary cousin!

Is that you Paul?

7:30 PM, Friday, November 21, 2008 .. Posted by ps

Drop a line, mate...