McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland

I like reading in a pub rather than a library or study, as it's generally much easier to get a drink.

I reckon if I can't spend the day sleeping, the next best thing is to spend it reading and drinking.

If you've had the right kind of education, it's amazing how many things you can find to feel guilty about.

But once you cross the Shannon - even though geographically you have only come a short distance - different rules of time apply, and most people still understand the crucial secret of human happiness: that it's better to do a few things slowly, than a lot of things fast.

That guy in the corner. Never tells the truth, as a matter of principle. Why answer a question, he says, if you can tell a good story instead?

We had found nothing, and had been lost several times already in one morning, so this was shaping up into a top travel experience.

If life is a book, then read it while you can.

I will go outside, wander about aimlessly, and see what happens.

Immediately across the road is a ruined abbey and cemetery. As I haven't visited one since late yesterday afternoon, I decide to take a look. On the whole, it's fair to say that, if you're travelling round the west of Ireland, an interest in ruined abbeys, however slight, will stand you in better stead than a passion for rollerblading, say or a penchant for showbiz gossip.

It’s no coincidence that the style of writing known as stream of consciousness was pioneered by Irish authors. Critics have missed the point, however, in regarding it as a radical, experimental reaction against literary convention. For many Irish people, the avant-garde monologue is the most commonplace form of everyday speech; and a very liberating thing it is too. Like the best kind of journey, it’s always liable to veer off in entirely unexpected directions and lead you to destinations you might never otherwise have considered.

Is it possible to have some kind of genetic memory of a place where you've never lived, but your ancestors have? Or am I just a sentimental fool, my judgement fuddled by nostalgia, Guinness, and the romance of the diaspora?

Never pass a bar with your name on it

I use the pay phone to call my friend Noel. The last time I was here he took me up a mountainside in Connemara with a seventy-eight-year-old poteen-maker who’d learned his craft as a teenager from his father. We spent the day watching him double-distill brown bog water in two oil drums over a turf fire into something that tasted like the finest malt. Noel acted as interpreter, as the old man spoke no English. Perhaps he’ll have another adventure in store for me this time.

The harp player had just fallen off the stage and cracked his head on an Italian tourist’s pint. There was a big cheer, and Con the barman rang a bell on the counter. St Patrick’s Day, and McCarthy’s Bar was heaving.

Sligo’s situation is particularly charming. Bold limestone hills dominate it to the North, while on the East side is the picturesque Lough Gill. The port occupies a site which was of first class importance from the earliest days. A great thoroughfare between North and South led to the ford across the Garavogue. Sligo was the birthplace in 1865 of W B Yeats, the famous poet.

She's in leggings, like the pregnant twenty-year-old in the tie-dyed vest next to her. Leggings. Bloody hell. Imagined by fatties everywhere to create a slimming effect, they make the average body look like a sack full of hammers.

The old stuffs for overseas. The new stuff’s for Ireland. Dublin mostly. Things are changing. Traditional design is synonymous with the past. They want to sit at glass tables now, with weird chairs, and good-looking women.

If life is a book, then read it while you can. Don’t save up any pages for later, because there might not be one.

There’s a man at the gate, watching me. ‘Have ya fallen and hurt yourself, or are ye just afraid of the cow?

I find my grandfather, buried with Great-Aunt Hannah and Uncle Jack. His surname is spelled ‘MacCarthy’, with an extra ‘a’; like many names here, it’s a translation from the Irish, so the ‘a’ is optional, and may appear and disappear with the generations.