Читать книгу Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? - Tim Bradford - Страница 16

After arriving in Dublin the plan was to have a quick wash and a bite to eat with my friends, the Macs, then start going through the Yellow Pages looking for Opel (the Irish brand of Vauxhall) dealers. I already had a few leads to check up on, people I’d spoken to in London before I left. Then Sarah Mac looked me in the eye and said, ‘Do you really want to spend all afternoon driving around Dublin trying to sell that car?’

(Of course I did. That was why I was here.)

‘Nah, not really. What I’d like to do is a cultural tour, and maybe work out a plan of action for the car later on.’

I took the bus with Sarah from where they lived in Dundrum into the centre of Dublin. During the journey we worked out the best way to do a cultural tour and give ourselves time to discuss the car. We decided we would go round a few pubs and have a pint in each one. Every pint we drank would represent a different aspect of Irish culture. I told her about one of my previous visits to the city when along with friends I had trawled around looking at the Book of Kells.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ll start there then.’

‘What a great idea,’ I said.

(The following tour is a mental and physical assault course of culture and Guinness. I moved around Dublin like a terrified blind man being led by a sadistic, hedonistic guide dog, hearing strange amplified urban voices, following the smell of cheap tourist perfume and beer-stained wooden floors, my fingers caressing the smoothly polished bar-tops and tables of grand pubs, my mouth bitter from the black stuff and the salty taste of laughter’s tears. I thought about writing some of it down, but instead relied on memory. With no particular plan in mind except to imagine I was no longer some East Midlands Kerouac-lite sad bastard but a latter day Dr Johnson-style cleverperson, sitting in pubs and watching people, learning this and that and writing things down then stuffing it all into my rucksack like some kind of demented memory snail. Some of the places we went to have simply disappeared forever. These are the ones that remain.)