Low life
Dublin delights
Jeffrey Bernard
There was a very good interlude in DaVY Burns' pub with an old friend, the writer and poet Anthony Cronin, a face from the Fifties. And if I am Taki's poor relation then how can he explain that I get drunk with prime ministers? When Cronin intro- duced me to the owner of the pub he said, `This is a friend of mine, Jeffrey Bernard, who got drunk with Charles Haughey the last time he was here in the horseshoe bar of the Shelbourne Hotel.' I was quite amazed. I remember a session with three ministers all right but I never realised until that moment that one of them was prime. And that is something that delights me about Ireland. Surely there can be no other country in which you could walk in from the street and have a serious session with three ministers. Of course, there isn't another country where you would want to. You would fall asleep at Westminster.
And the racing scene is nicely different. There is hardly any toffee to be seen on the noses in the Members' enclosure. I had a word with that grand old trainer, Con Collins, who took me aside to whisper in my ear, 'I've a chance in the last.' I paid heed, had my only, pet of the weekend and the horse trotted up. It was a nice little win. It was also on that afternoon that I was introduced to a charming woman who owns a stud. I was later told that she is worth something in the region of £100 million. Much too much later. That is a slightly puzzling aspect of Ireland. The middle class seem to be loaded, by my standards anyway.
Another thing I found to be very Irish indeed was Tony Cronin telling me about a biography he is writing. I can't remember the name of the subject but your man apparently didn't do anything. Not only
he not do anything but he spent the last ten years of his life in bed with a bottle of whisky. Not the same one, you under- stand. What a very tricky project. I'm sure Cronin will have us sitting on the edge of our seats, though. As for Irish barmen they are an example to all the idiots who serve us here. There should be a law against the, current trend in London of employing young colonials, hitchhiking their way across Europe, be-
hind the bar. In Ireland a barman is apprenticed to the job before he can
Perform the important operation of admi- nistering vital medicine. I really can't think of much bad to say about the Irish and I suspect that that is because one was brought up to have extremely romantic
ideas about them, but when a Dublin taxi-driver talks to you about Yeats then
you know you're not taking a cab down Oxford Street. The only good thing about coming back to London is that I think I have found the fifth Mrs Bernard. I was moaning to a friend on my my first night back about the
living out of carrier bags situation and having clothes scattered all over London
and she told me about a strange woman tramp in Camden Town, who appealed to me instantly. It seems she has so many Plastic bags, something in the order of 20, that to cross the road with her possessions, she has to make so many trips back and forth it takes her 15 minutes. The two of us could take all day crossing Old Compton Street.
It was infuriating in a way to see how comparatively easy it is to get a flat in Dublin. It could well be worth emigrating. They are friendly enough to make it worth Considering. When I told Cronin that I suspected a lot of the Irish didn't like the English he said not at all and that probably the only ones who do dislike us are the ones living in Camden Town here and now. Anyway, the Sunday Independent have syndicated this column for a trial three Months so I shall have to watch it and refrain from making facetious Irish jokes, and on my last morning in Dublin, strolling to my favourite bar, the Old Stand, a Postman asked me the way. The late dear Jeremy Madden-Simpson, an Irishman, once told us in the Coach that he was thinking of getting a job as a Christmas tern') postman. Testing him, we asked
where Blackpool was. He said it was next to Brighton. How so? 'Because it is a seaside town and isn't everything by the sea near Brighton?' The origin of the Irish joke is a mystery to me. They make the best ones themselves just as Jews do. Ours are bad imitations.
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