Wm. Byrne’s Pub (accomodations available)

It was a pleasant time in Kilkenny, a touristy place but gracefully so, picturesque and friendly. When we got off the bus we had no idea where to stay, and none of us had bothered to check what time it would be when we got there. It wasn’t terribly late, but it was late enough to make finding a place to stay a bit worrisome after our adventures in Sligo (rhymes with “closed”). We gatihered up our luggage and started the tromp toward the center of town.

We hadn’t gone far when we saw a sign for a B&B. They were full, but they directed us across the street to William Byrne’s Pub. Soon we were installed in a room and free to explore the city at night. After a nice dinner at a Pub (established in 12-something-something by a woman who was married four times, opened an inn or three, then was accused of witchcraft and force to flee for her life — her staff and associates didn’t fare so well and met demises so grisly it’s hard to imagine anyone remotely civilized condoning them), we returned to our “home pub”, set up laptops, and I composed a couple of the previous episodes. (Things are getting a bit asynchronous here; sorry about that.)

Somewhere around closing time the bartender struck up conversation with fuego and me. We talked about movies, Web sites, music, and life in general. It turned out we were talking to Wm. himself, head honcho and owner of the establishment.

The next morning, or should I say later that same morning, we were a bit sluggish as we staggered down the stairs into the pub for breakfast. There was Billy, looking quite a bit more chipper than I felt. Breakfast was among the best I’d had on the trip, the full Irish deal for me (less mushrooms), while the others chose different items off the menu (one advantage I hadn’t considered to staying at a B&B connected to a restaurant is that the options for breakfast are much more varied).

That day we didn’t get a whole lot of sightseeing done, and what we did consisted mainly of wandering around the town aimlessly. I did manage to do a bit of writing, and a bit of napping. That night we finished up at Billy’s again, but although I stayed up working longer than the others, it was almost a reasonable time when I went upstairs to crash.

This morning we were up a little bit before Billy, who rushed down the stairs to open the pub for us. He explained that he had been on the Internet into the wee hours, playing with an internet jukebox type of site. The Internet — an intoxicating thing! We poked around town a bit longer and with more purpose, left Billy with a copy of Pirates and a bottle of Becherovka, and on we went to Cork.

The Pump House

It was a bit warmer today, but the sun is just a memory now and the wind blowing down the narrow streets carries a chill that goes deep. It cannot reach me here, however. I am in The Pump House, a fine pub in Kilkenny in the southern reaches of Ireland. To my left a small fire flickers warmly in the fireplace, on my right is a glass of Smithwicks (rhymes with Phythics), foam clinging in rings to the side of the glass, measuring my progress sip by sip. Were there usable electricity here, it would be perfect.

Programming Note: The Unknown

I’ve got the cover piece over at Piker Press this week. It’s the third in a series of three stories, starting with Tin Can, followed by Home Burn, and now this one. They evoke (or at least try to) a golden age of SF feeling, from back in the day when flying around in space ships seemed inevitable. In a way it’s nostalgia for something we never even had in the first place. They are simple stories, but I like them. Perhaps you will too.

1

The Oldest Bar in the World

Last night found the three of us in Athlone, roughly in the center of Ireland. Although we found ourselves about as far from an ocean as you can get on this island, it is still a place with a long maritime tradition. The river Shannon (let me say right now that for no reason whatsoever I find the phrase ‘River Shannon’ to be poetry of the deepest and most moving sort) passes through here, or perhaps more accurately this town is here because it was one of the places land travelers could get across the river.

They would not be crossing today. The river is running high and swiftly; there is flooding downstream. I imagine that the powers that be are trying to allow the runoff from the recent storms to reach the sea with the least overall damage, and things are right on the edge here. Just downstream from town things are looking lakelike, with trees poking up here and there.

Now, of course, there are bridges and all that sort of thing up and down the river, so the rushing waters, while not helpful, can no longer strand travelers for weeks while they wait for the waters to subside. Naturally, those stranded travelers would have wanted to have a nip in the local pub while they waited for the water to calm. Where we sit now, while not in the actual building, is documentably the same pub that travelers cooled their heels in starting around 900 A.D. Yeah, you read that right, and I didn’t leave any digits out.

I was talking to a regular there, Jeffrey (Geoffrey?), whose father was a regular there, and whose father’s father was a regular there, and who’s father’s father’s father… It is possible that some ancient ancestor of Jeffrey sat on the first barstool 1107 years ago, and had a pint of something that we would judge today to be truly awful, but at the time was just the thing.

Compared to that place, that institution, I’m nothing. I’m just a spark, a flash, here and gone. The bar has outlasted all its patrons, the people who lit up the place when they arrived, the people who were greeted gladly by name, the people who mattered to those around them. They are all gone now, and forgotten. You and I, in this noisy-fast world, we don’t stand a chance.

New Year’s Eve, Galway-style

The blustery, cold weather continued through the day on New Year’s Eve, the atmosphere itself a participant in the festivities. When we left the haven of the cafĂ©, our plan was to go to one of the more popular pubs with live music, to establish a beachhead early before the crowds started to gather.

I’m not sure of the definition of early required to pull this off, but mid-afternoon wasn’t it. The place was packed, the music was already going, and the chances of sitting within the next few hours was next to zero. On to the next place. And the next. There were two sorts of pubs in that area: ones that were overflowing with humanity and ones that would not be having music that night. A couple of smaller, local pubs were inviting, but we’re in Ireland, dammit, and we wanted music. Our quest continued.

We ventured back to the square and up a different road, into a less pedestrian-friendly but consequently less crowded neighborhood. We tried a couple of places, then a bartender in one told us that the next pub up the road would probably have live music. The place was not crowded, rugby was on the projection screen, and the bartender confirmed that there would in fact be live music. While fuego and MaK took our excess electronic gear back to the hotel for safety, I settled in and scratched out a few passages in my notebook. The bartender was a personable guy; he had lived in New York for a while and so when I mentioned that I was from San Diego he asked if I was a Chargers fan and what I thought of their chances this year. I didn’t mention that the fate of that team rests almost entirely in my hands.

Eventually the others returned and we relaxed and tried to figure out the nuances of rugby by watching the games. It was a good way to spend some time after fuego’s birthday celebrations the night before. More people arrived, and after a while two girls and an older man started setting up their instruments. The band, at a guess a father and his two daughters. Before long they began to play, exhibiting not a shred of joy as they executed the songs. The first time the girls broke a smile was when one of them had a hard time with the words to a song. They loosened up a bit as the gig progressed, but they never stopped giving the impression they wished they were somewhere else. Still, it was music, Irish music by Irish people, and the pub was pleasant enough.

The band wrapped up at 9 pm, leaving us once more with the choice of crowds with music or comfort with none. We began to tromp around once more, heading back to a place we knew that was a bit off the main drag but would have music. We went in and I was surprised that the place was less crowded than it had been on previous visits. We easily found a place to sit and ordered drinks. Then the band started.

They were horrible.

Soon we were on the street once more, the wind throwing the light rain at is from random directions, and we followed a similar course, wandering through the streets, asking the police where they thought the best place to go was on New Year’s Eve. The King’s Head, the cops agreed, but the party there was spilling far out on into the pedestrian mall and I knew at a glance that that would not be the place for me. We wandered some more, my companions produced a bottle of Becherovka, fuego scored plastic cups from one of the clubs, and it slowly became clear that we would be celebrating the new year outside.

We made our way to a more sheltered street where there were other revelers under the awnings of the bars. fuego frightened some of the locals with his exuberance — one Irishman, in particular, responded with the typical passive-aggressive “I’m backing away from you slowly, but not without judging you first” attitude when my brother asked him why no one had fireworks. Of course, that just added fuel to the fuego and he spent the next few minutes explaining to the guy why fireworks were a good idea. I spent the time talking to a girl that was in the group with them, enjoying the contrast in style of the two main characters in the little drama.

Midnight came, midnight went, the year was new, the bottle spent. We made our way back to our B&B, to peaceful slumber.