My Dublin Life

Whelan's rocks. It's a pub on Wexford Street which is a sort of shabby-chic end of town, a funny mix of fancy grocery stores and discount stores and nice looking restaurants (which I can't afford) and greasy spoons. Saoirse turned me on to it. It LOOKS like an ordinary enough pub, kinda scruffy, battered wooden floorboards and all the rest of it, and it FEELS like an ordinary pub if you go there early in the evening.

What I've found out is that if it's on in Whelan's, it's generally very good, so if you perk up in the evening, find 2o euros down the back of the sofa and want to go out, Whelan's is generally your best bet.

I took Bepe there the other day. We were going to go to the Long Hall but it was too crowded and noisy for me to listen to his tales of woe, so we went to Whelans instead. Last night. To hear this guy called Declan O'Rourke. Declan is handsome in a slightly puffy way, and when he sings... well, it's not my usual favourite style of music but he was great. Bepe liked him too.

Of course, we got chips on the way home (bad girl! no supper tonite!) and then Bepe casually laid his arm across my shoulder until we reached the flat. Is that normal? He's Italian. Maybe they all do that, all the time. Or is it meaningful? That could be awkward.

To diffuse the situation and make up my mind I started babbling about George the Librarian at the National Library and my big crush on him. Today I'm lying low for various reasons: not that much money; slight hangover; anxious feeling about Bepe; guilty feeling about badmouthing brother-in-law who sent nice email thanking me for their lovely stay and saying he really felt welcome.

I'm sure the Bepe thing is nothing--plus I don't want to have to move out. I like living on Bachelor's Walk. I think I'm going to look up my girlfriends. I'll even go shopping if they want.

Bepe and Fabia have broken up!

While I am sorry for him, OBVIOUSLY, I am not sorry to see the back of that skinny little B***.

Anyway, hilariously, she is actually having an affair with the older, married brother of the guy she's au pairing for. Apparently, he had his wife were on a "trial separation" and she pounced. Like, this is a relationship that is so going to last.

Bepe found out because she was kindly asked to leave her employment by the family who were hoping that the brother and his wife were going to sort things out. So she is on the plane back to Italy. Yay!

Of course, poor Bepe, etc. Because he was so nice to me when I had a cold, I told him that I'd take him out to drown his sorrows tonight, drinks on me. I'm thinking the Long Hall. I love it there because it's so totally old and you can really imagine Bram Stoker or Oscar Wilde or someone coming in to replenish their snuff or something. You've just got to factor out the TV and the peanuts behind the bar. There's lots of gloomy dark wood and stuff so it's just the place to be miserably style.

Seriously though he is better off without her. She is so not worth it. And I'm sure he'll find someone else really soon.

So...the family is back in town and while it is great hanging out with them and all, I am also looking forward to when they leave as balancing reading, my gradually increasing family circle and a family of sister, brother-in-law, kids and their grandma is pushing me way beyond my capacity.
They had a great time in Wexford, think they may have seen the cottage from which the ancestors of the brother-in-law left over 200 years ago and generally had fun. They stayed at a little place in the country and are now ready for dose of the city before they head home.
Although my brother in law says that they are "boring" I decided that they needed to see a bit of culture, so yesterday I traipsed them around the National Museum on Kildare Street. The kids loved it, especially the bog bodies (gruesome little brutes). Then we went over to the other section of the museum on the northside, Collins Barracks. They have a lot of cool stuff there, in no particular order, including a range of stuffed animals from the nineteeth (or eighteenth?) century. I didn't want to get too close as they looked like they might be smelly, but they went down well too.
Although the kids just loved the bog bodies, I hafta say they've been kind of haunting me. They look so vulnerable and lost and somehow as though they might even wake up, despite being squished and in pieces. And you can totally imagine how they must have looked when they were alive -- just like anyone you might see on the street. It makes the past seem a lot closer -- and it also makes me want to be cremated after I die, to avoid having my grizzled corpse giggled at by a bunch of snotty little kids