Rules are there for a reason...

In his book, McCarthy's Bar, the late, great Pete McCarthy lists one of the rules of travel as being: never pass a pub with your name on it. Clearly a man with his priorities in the right place. Today though it's another of his maxims which has come to haunt me: never go anywhere without something to read.

Admittedly this takes on far more significance if, like Pete, you're trapped on a tiny island accessible only by irregular cable car. It's also worth bearing in mind when you turn up to a National Trust for Scotland visitor centre in torrential rain for a children's event only to have the kids wheeched away and be told you're not needed.

Since reading McCarthy's Bar I've taken smug delight in always having a book or two with me. That'll teach me. With heavy heart I hit the gift shop only to be confronted with the usual Highland array of tourist tat. I was half hoping to find The True Story Of Whisky Galore by Roger Hutchison who wrote the excellent Calum's Road. Alas the closest I came was a book on what's worn under the kilt (nothing, it's all in perfect working order! Barum tish) and a selection of volumes detailing how best to match a tartan to whatever tenuous clan connection you may have. Ach well, I suppose they know their market.

Here, this one looks interesting...it's by A. Local, 'Extraction and Digging Deep: A Century of Milking The Tourist Dollar'

Polish-ed and professional

This really is a brilliant story.

In some ways, I suppose, it could only happen in Ireland. That's not meant in any patronising or derogatory way - I'm thinking more of the general spirit of the place which somehow seems to 'permit' strange and magical things to occur.

Long story short, as they say, police - Garda - in the Republic have been hot on the trail on a renegade Polish driver who has racked up over 50 offences, from speeding to parking illegally. The cunning fiend has, somehow managed to evade capture...well, I guess you would if every time the police took your name down they looked at your European Driving Licence and scribbled down "Mr Prawo Jazdy" and only later discovered that they'd booked "Mr Driving Licence."

The Irish Times also carry the story, with a typically twinkle-in-the-eye cheeky comment at the end.

Expect the recidivist Mrs Library Card from the Czech Republic to have her cover blown.

Like I said, only in Ireland. It's the sort of couldn't-make-it-up tale which I just know would have Pete McCarthy smiling down on the oul' country.

Library Thing

Well, that's quite exciting. I've just been signing up for a scheme called Library Thing which allows one to catalogue (or catalog since the site seems to be US based!) one's books. There's also a lovely wee widget feature which I'll fiddle about with later and include somewhere on this blog.

As I was trying to add in one of my books (McCarthy's Bar, of course) the search also brought up a book whose introduction is written by Pete McCarthy and which I also happen to own and enjoy. So I clicked on that to be my first "add." As a site [LibraryThing] with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, I was excited to find that no-one else had the book in their list.

Always nice to be a pioneer!

The eighth rule of travel...

...states "never pass a pub with your name on it." So, at least, said Pete McCarthy.
I've just re-read the wonderful McCarthy's Bar for the umpteenth time and, as always, it made me want to decamp immediately to West Cork. Any book with the line, "The barman was in his sixties and a cardigan" immediately deserves a prize.

Bill Bryson, in "Notes from a small island" said of Durham "Go! At once! Take my car!" and West Cork fits easily into the same category. Only more so. Durham's fine and dandy and having only visited once I shouldn't really comment but it can't possibly be a patch on West Cork.

Pete manages to make the place come alive to the extent that not only does the reader want to visit but in many ways one feels one already has.

I realise that as a frequent visitor to Ireland over the years that it's a fairly existential concept for me to imagine that I'd not visited somewhere and clear my memory of it in order to imagine - through the book - that I'd somehow glimpsed these people and places through Pete's eyes. But a pint of Guinness certainly helps the process.

The book, essentially, is the story of Pete's quest to find some sense of belonging in a country he knows well through visits and family ties but in which he's never lived. He questions whether it's possible to have a "spiritual ancestry" or whether the Irish just make everyone feel welcome being, as they are, "expert havers of a good-time."

I don't know. I've always felt at home in Ireland, though not - strangely - in the North where, oddly enough, most of the relatives are. What does that say about the diaspora?

What the book mostly throws up is the value of human contact and right across the road from MacCarthy's Bar itself is the source of one of my favourite memories of Ireland...

July, 2001 my good lady and I were sitting down to breakfast in a B&B in a fuzzy-headed-too-much-Guinness-in-MacCarthy's way. The owner of the establishment - a ruddy faced man of indeterminate years - asked us if we'd like tea or coffee and then suggested "you'll have the full Irish?" No, thanks, we're fine. Just bacon and sausage for me please. "Ach sure, you'll manage the full Irish..." No, really. Coffee, bacon, sausage - magic, thanks.

Moments later it duly appeared...including the clearly non-optional eggs, black pudding, white pudding, fried bread and mushrooms that make up the "full Irish" version of bacon and sausage!