What happens in Dublin...

I'd like to tell you a little bit about the city of Dublin, where I spent a fun couple of days this weekend just passed. Regrettably, I can't because apart from a restorative circuit of St Stephen's Green on Saturday lunchtime, I saw precious little of it which wasn't the inside of some drinking establishment or other.

I don't think I've been so thoroughly (or pleasantly) soaked in alcohol for a very, very long time, and in the true spirit of stag and hen affairs, what happens in Dublin stays in Dublin. (Either that, or my memory of the thing is inexplicably patchy. One of those two things is definitely the case). I can tell you bits of what I do remember, though.

We were, by any measure, a civilised bunch. Not for this intrepid eight the cringeworthy shame of humiliating the stag in a mankini or some other sartorial horror. Indeed we were described by one of the musicians playing a pub we visited as, "...the best-behaved stag party in Dublin." I recognise that this would be a source of shame for some stag groups. Not for me. I've always hated that sort of shit and have no desire to see even a good mate's bare arse on even the most ribald of weekends, let alone parade it though the streets of an unfamiliar city and then try to gain access to a pub.

So, gain access to pubs we did. Without any difficulty at any one of them, on account of the fact that even shit-faced we were a civilised lot. I was then, once inside, faced with the task of making up for the years of lost 'real' Guinness drinking I'd inflicted upon myself by never having been to Ireland before. I can report, dear reader, that I did my best. We all did. The Guinness is indeed different, though not as much as some would have you believe. But nowhere was it served badly, nowhere did it have that metallic tang it acquires if it hasn't been cared for correctly, and nowhere did it taste better than in the 360-degree Dublin panorama that was the bar at the top of the brewery.

I congratulate the eight men, good and true, who did their best to drink their own weight while at the same time not descending into that awful Brits-abroad stereotype. Good luck with the forthcoming wedding, Mr M. (Don't tell anybody I said this but he's batting well above his average there).   ;o)

I look forward to seeing all of you again on April 20th.



Edit: I've just had a flashback of one of the more vivid sights of the weekend. A lad sitting on the stone steps of one of Dublin's grander buildings, being copiously sick into his own hand, while his killer-heeled girlfriend kicked him repeatedly in the ribs. Oh, Dublin in the spring...