Begorrah, which way to the station?

The wife and I have just returned from a weekend in Dublin.  It's been a few years since we darkened its door, and, as I was there on Friday for work anyhoos, we decided to extend the visit.

Dublin has a special place in my heart.  I spent a lot of time there in my late teens and early twenties - an impressionable time for anyone of course.  But Dublin is an easy city for a easily-led fop to become enamoured of.  It delights in its artists rather than its buildings, which is unusual for a capital city.  This is probably a function of its having been built by the British.  It is *full* of striking Georgian terraces, making it look very unlike the rest of Ireland.  Dubliners, therefore, don't take massive pride in the city's aesthetic qualities.  No, it's their wordsmiths that get the praise.

Take for example Davy Byrne's pub.  Leopold Bloom stopped for his lunch there in Joyce's Ulysses, and acolytes still call in to replicate the scene with a Gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy.  Compare this with The Grapes in London's Limehouse.  As a child, Dickens used regularly to visit Limehouse to call on his uncle who lived there.  His uncle would take the boy to the pub and place him on a table in to sing ballads for the entertainment of the regulars.  The pub is still largely as it was in Dickens' age.  It's a wonderfully atmospheric place, with its dark smoke-stained wood panelling and the sound of The Thames lapping up outside the rear windows.  But how many Londoners are aware of this place?  Hundreds maybe.  London is so busy hoicking-up its petticoats to attract tourists with a bit of architectural leg that it rather overlooks its gems like this.

Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

I had occasion to cycle to Homebase en route home last evening, to fetch some new paintbrushes - never a joy at the best of time, this.  I go through paintbrushes like a chimp through bananas.  I can't seem to clean them properly, despite following the manufacturer's instructions to the letter, and buying the finest brush-cleaning chemicals money can buy.  They all turn into petrified slabs.  Anyhoo that's not the point of this article - let us return to our sheep: it was a grim January evening in east London; it had been vaguely damp for most of the day, which don't mind ordinarily.  A small drop of the wet stuff never killed anyone (with apologies to the family of anyone it did, however.) 

But when I emerged from HB, the weather took a turn for the worse.  It started to rain.  The rain wasn't heavy, more fat really.  By this, I mean the drop density wasn't high.  Visibility was good etc., but the individual drops were massive, like peanuts.  They seemed to be falling to earth quicker that the usual, smaller raindrops.  I realise this is a physical impossibility if Newton is to be believed, but my hand to God, it was the fasted rain I've ever seen.  Each drop carried such a payload that being struck by one actually hurt; it was like a small electric shock.

By the time I'd unlocked the bike and reattached the lights, the game was up.  I was soaked.  I shot home and jumped in the bath.  Also, the new brushes soaked-up enough moisture to keep them soft for the duration of the journey home, so not a wasted effort.