The Pastels and the prisms

Yank comes into O'Donoghue's at lunchtime. "A Paddy and a Carlssberg Special." Stands about two feet back from the bar. "Eh, make that a cold Carlsberg Special, huh?" Ike jacket, check shirt, levis, moustache, thinning blonde hair. A big man, hard, mid-thirties, face like a map of Saigon.  By Gene Kerrigan

Ice in the Paddy. Holds the glass half an inch from his lips. Leaves it there a few seconds - then, flick, flick, and the glass goes back on the counter, ice rattling, sparkling, unnstained by any hint of gold.

The hand that put the glass back moves on and pours half the bottle of Carlsberg into a tall glass. Same story. Hoist, pause, tilt ... and when the glass straightens up all that's left inside is the streaky froth. Like the tide's gone out.

And what you have to think is that this is something special. A drink is being dealt with, whiskey and chaser, in the grand tradition of Dodge City, Chicago, and the wilder shores of 8th Avenue. An alien tradition, but one to be observed with interest and respect. Like watching a Chinese eat with chop-sticks or a Parisian driving a car.

A folk tradition is being practiced, demonstrated.

Hand goes back to the counter, pours the rest of the Carlsberg. Hoist, pause, tilt ... Splutter.

And the spray is like a wave just hit a rock somewhere nearby.

"Sorry."

Hurried exit by Yank. What the hell, not too many Irish people today have mastered the spinning wheel.

When you get past the trimmings all it amounts to is that we set aside public rooms in which to drink. Alcohol and its attractions can be and are savoured in private places. But, in a separate development, we have set up rooms and hung signs above the doors to say that this is a place where' we can gather together to drink.

There are more of these rooms than there are rooms set aside for eating or Cormac's, Talbot Street, above, praying. Each has its own decorations, shape, atmosphere - dictated by and evolved from the surrounding area, the habits of its regular clientele, the idioosyncrasies of the owner. We ascribe various motives to our visits to these rooms, follow rituals and observe unwritten laws.

Nine o'clock Saturday night, there's a guy trying to catch the bartender's eye in Kitty O'Shea's of Grand Canal Street. Casual jacket, spotless and just pressed. Black slacks with a crease you could use for sharpening pencils. Red, just shaven, face, and the quantity of Old Spice calculated carefully so that the first whiff will be picked up at a distance of precisely fifteen inches.

This lad did not drop down to the pub tonight. He put himself together like he was going out to climb a mounntain - very carefully, layer upon layer. Kitty O'Shea's used to be one of those dark old pubs and it seemed there was always an old guy down there who looked like he was about to fall off the end of the counter. Last June, Brian and Kevin Loughney took it over and spent a lot of money doing things to it. Cream walls, memorabilia from the Parnell era, old wood, stained glass, gas lamps. Some of the seats have cloth that came from the seats on the Orient Express. That kind of thing.

Used to be that workers from -the meat factory across the road were the best customers. Now the street outside is lined with cars. It looks like most people in here are going to a party later on - or are looking for one to go to. The women with strategically placed things that glitter on or around careefully chosen clothes. The men stood up very close to the razor before they came out.

At the curve near the end of the bar there's an old guy in an anorak. He's heard a nice piecej.of music from the speakers on the wall. "D'ye hear that, the joanna? Always wanted to be able to play the piano." Shakes his head. "But I never learnt it."

When he picks his pint up from the counter he does it carefully, because he's picked up a lot of them tonight. Imagine comes out of the speakers.

"Aaah, John Lennon! Lord have mercy on him. He was very good, he really was."

He's talking to heads that are turnning away. This is not a pub where you get gently drunk and eulogise slain mussicians or solve the Middle East problem before closing time. There is a funcction for this pub. People, mostly young, meet with others of their kind, mostly middle class, and talk and look one another over and it's a place to go out to and feel comfortable in. And while you're there you, almost inciidentally, drink.

Old man sitting at the bar in Doheny and Nesbitt's. Usually sits in the same spot, when he can get it. If someeone grunts in his direction he might agree once or twice in an evening that the weather's picking up, but mostly he just sips his pint and stares across the bar.

And behind the bar, like turreted and battlemented towns of long ago.

The lines of coloured bottles swiril and glow ...

Tonight he's uneasy. There's a couple to his right, the woman midd.fifties, the man mid-sixties. The old - man, cap and long black overcoat, looks at the other man then looks away. Like he still remembers from long ago his mother telling him it's rude to stare. But his eyes keep coming back to the other man. Someething like an hour has gone by.

The other man finally notices the old man's glances. He begins his own surreptitious glancing.

"I wasn't sure ... " "Jesus Christ almighty!" "I didn't want to ... "

"It's forty, no, forty-five years.

Jesus Christ almighty!"

They move close together and ouy more drink and begin talking about the Spanish Civil War. Comrades who died then or since, jobs held and lost, and it's impossible to tell from the exxchanges if they went to the Loyalist or Fascist side and it doesn't much matter now. And the couple leave after twenty minutes or so and the old man orders another pint and looks 'acros's the bar at the turreted and battlemented towns of long ago.

YOU arrange the accoutrements to your liking. Drink, cigarettes, ashtray, all within reach of a hand. m: bows on the counter. This is bar drinkking. This is not meeting folks in a commfortable room, this is not popping in for a quick one. This is taking a coin from every handful of change the barrtender hands back and leaving it on the counter. And when a lot of time has gone by you can look at the coins and answer your own question about whether it's been eight times or twelve that the bartender caught your gesture.

* He can ease the present back into the past.
Staring at the pastels and the prisms on the shelf
With the magic words that make the evening last -
"The same again, and have one for yourself"

*From the album The Secret Drinker by Pete Atkin.

This requires good bartenders and a decent stretch of bar, a proper relationnship between the height of the bar and the height of the stool, subtle lighting that accommodates the spirit. Bowes, O'Donoghue's, Foley's, Kehoe's and a few more. The Bailey has the bar and the bartenders but it's full of creeps looking for attention. And what else you need for bar drinking is a cold eye to point at drinkers who want to talk about the weather or Tony Gregory's dilemma. A bar drinker meets old friends or makes new ones but never talks about the weather. Mostly he just sits there, most of the world withhin reach of one arm, the rest.inside his head.

He can make the looming future lose its sting.
Staving off the pressure is a bargain at the price.
Of the magic words that make the angels sing,
"The same again, go easy on the ice. "

And it's always a he. Bar drinking is a man's game. It's a rare woman who sits alone in a bar for any length of time, usually she'll be waiting for someone. Probably it's because any woman who uses a bar that way soon has some idiot wanting to buy her a drink or tell her a joke or ask her if she's been stood up, and there are only so many ways to say get lost and the whole thing gets to be more trouble than it's worth. Moving over to make way for women isn't all about equal pay. They haven't yet got room at the bar.

Ten o'clock and the open fire is slumping a bit in The Commodore, at the corner of Parnell Street and J errvis Street. The Farrelly family have been holding down this spot for about thirty years. Last April they got final notice to quit. The Corporation would like to widen the road, please. The Corpo may go ahead with the road, they may not. They don't really know, they can't really say when it might be.

Meanwhile, The Commodore sails on. A bit like an English pub, except that people don't stand at the bar the way the English do. Three rooms, one with a TV where people can slouch back and say that the Late Late is bloody awful and did you know that Clint Eastwood is on UTV. The other two have no such distraction, just tables where you sit and talk. A pleassant place, quiet, probably the best public place in Dublin to go for a cheerful evening of conversation.

You go to places like The Commoodore for a particular kind of drinking. Couples or quartets or groups, a quiet night, somewhere to go out to. Some people are from the area, others drive to it because they like it, the way some people drive to Kitty O'Shea's because there's something there that matches what they're doing with the rest of their life.

Cormack's, in Talbot Street, noobody drives to. A community pub. Women in the back, men in the front, settled, nobody striving, nobody lookking for anything, just enjoying the company of the people they live with. Same with Maguire's in Amiens Street or The Oasis in Cabra, except that a pub in a sprawling estate will be bigger and you have to stake out your corner. The room gets shaped to fit the people who use it.

O'Donoghue's, Sunday before one o'clock. Some people feeding their hangovers to keep them at bay, some getting an early start on tomorrrow's hangover, some having a middday tincture - others on coffee or soft drinks. And you never raise your 'eyebrows at another person's drink. They want a double tomato juice with ice and a twist of lemon - okay, that's what they want, let them have it. If it fits the shape of your mouth it tastes fine.

Somebody has started playing a fiddle up front in O'Donoghue's and you can listen or tune it out and read the paper. Come night time the crowd will be here, but now it's quiet enough and it's as good a room to spend this time of day in as any other, better than most. And the soda water, coffee and orange say that it hasn't just to do with filling your face with drink. •