Free McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland by Pete McCarthy

hours was fined £50…Delaney had nine similar convictions for similar offences.’ He’ll be terrified about getting caught again, then.
    But the landlady can’t resist her natural curiosity for long. I ask for a packet of nuts and she’s in like a flash, wondering if perhaps I’m on holiday. If you’re the sort of person who likes to project an air of cool and remote mystery, or even if you just prefer to keep yourself to yourself, you should avoid small villages in south-west Ireland like the plague.
    ‘I’m looking for someone I know from England. I don’t suppose you’d—’
    ‘One of the lads from Wild Mountain, is he? They’re not a bad bunch. Marvellous places they’ve built up there. Sure, all this nonsense about them living on the dole. Well, fair enough, some of them do, but they’re getting a lot less in subsidy than the farmers, and you don’t hear anyone complaining about them. And at least it’s all going back into the local economy. I see it as God’s way of redistributing wealth from Dublin, and anyway aren’t they a lot better for the place than these rich English and Germans buying up the houses and leaving them empty fifty weeks of the year. I’d say they’ve got their own ways of relaxing and having fun, but haven’t we all, and did you know now that they have their own cricket team? First year they entered they won the league. Look!’
    I’m struggling to keep up. She takes down a framed photo from a shelf by the gin optic. There they are, eleven hairy men in white cricket flannels, smiling, enthusiastic, and, as far as you can tell, as straight as Bob Marley.
    ‘You don’t know someone called Dominic, do you?’
    ‘Wasn’t he in here last night playing with the band. Been very ill, you know, with the pneumonia, but he’s looking better now. Lovely boy.’
    ‘Could you tell me how to find him? He said it was a bit complicated.’
    ‘Sure, it is, I suppose. But I’d say it’s easy enough to find once you know where it is.’
    Fair enough.
    ‘Or I could give you his cellphone number, if you like.’
    Two hours later I’m in Dominic’s house, pondering the complexity of life with a mobile, but without a bathroom or toilet. The place is like a junk shop that’s recently been ransacked by burglars who were interrupted before they could take anything away. Guitars, fishing rods, tools, plates, toys, hats, sticks, vegetables, an accordion, books, a bridle, some reins, a crossbow, a PA system and some animals all jostle for space among the battered pieces of furniture. There’s a Belfast sink, and a cast-iron cooking range like Auntie Annie’s, only older. Seven-year-old Merry runs in and out, occasionally catching me a friendly blow between the eyes with a shot from his spudgun.
    ‘I know it looks a mess,’ grins Dominic, opening two cans of Murphy’s, and producing a packet of cigarette papers from underneath a cat, ‘but I know where everything is.’
    He’s not had an easy life, and not always looked after himself, and it shows in his face, which looks older than his thirty-four years. After living as a traveller in England, he came to Ireland for a weekend festival. Twelve years, three kids, and a gypsy caravan later, he’s a home-owner. And in a country that’s traditionally exported its young men to work in the English building trade, he’s a builder.
    There’s an uninterrupted view north-west to the mountains. It’s six miles into town. The house and a big chunk of land cost ₤12,000, which wouldn’t have bought a garage back in Brighton. It’s a one-up one-down in need, as the estate agent would write, stifling a smirk, of some modernisation and improvement. To someone from a carefully preserved English cottage, or a freshly carpeted Irish bungalow, it might look like hippy squalor; but it could suggest something else. The intricate jumble of life’s essentials, tools and fuel, children and animals, music and alcohol, crammed together under one roof