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

sharply into a small valley, with mountains beyond.
    ‘When you wake in the morning, and look out there, and it’s all full of mist down below you…we could never live like this in England.’
    So does he feel part of the local community?
    ‘The Irish community? No. They tolerate me, but I’ll always be on the outside. Might be different one day for the kids. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like it, though.’
    He gives me the guided tour, proud as any first-time buyer. There’s no electricity, just candles and oil lamps. No mains water, so he’s dug a well. The fireplace in the living-room is so enormous it’s burning eight-foot logs. An eight-foot log is a tree, isn’t it? There’s a half-built minstrel gallery around the living-room. And a party going on.
    There are maybe twenty-five or thirty adults round the place, and almost as many children. The adults, like adults at parties all round the world, are crowding into the kitchen for no apparent reason, where they are shouting, laughing, and getting intoxicated in the manner of their choice. Like a Friday night anywhere, I suppose, only with more body piercing. I’m intrigued that the adults are happy to get wild in front of the kids. A lot of people would disapprove, but on the other hand the kids haven’t been dumped with an unmotivated teenager who’s on £3 an hour.
    They also don’t look like part of an alternative subculture. Not like the hippy kids who used to plague the fairs and festivals I used to perform at with Cliffhanger Theatre in the 1980s. These were wild-eyed, tie-dyed, sub-Lord of the Flies monsters, many of whom, I’m told, are now earning small fortunes as DJs and producers of ambient grooves for the post-E generation. Christ, they were bastards then, though, walking all over the stage, destroying performances. Then one day a psychopathic performance artist opened his show by urinating on the hippy kids. Some people say Flower Power died when Hell’s Angels killed a member of the audience at Altamont in 1969, but for many of us, this was the defining moment.
    But these kids aren’t like that. The boys are just kick boxing, the girls polite, inquisitive, and dancing whenever the music isn’t too weird. They all seem to have English accents, but when I ask them are they English or Irish, the answer’s always the same.
    ‘Irish, of course.’

    An hour has gone by, and Dominic is standing and swaying, belting out obscure ballads in the middle of the kitchen. Danny opens a birthday present to reveal a lavender-coloured bra. He strips off and puts it on, to cheers, laughter, flashbulbs and tequila. A very big, very loud, very wild man passes me a bottle of clear liquid, but I pass it on when he’s not looking, paranoid that it may have been spiked with something. Then I start to wonder if my paranoia means I’ve already been spiked. I start to feel foolish, pootling around in my hire car, with my sentimental memories, in the country where they’re actually living. I’m the one who should have bought the ruin, but I’m so clueless I’d have had to hire a builder. English, probably.
    I find myself in the glow of the eight-foot fire talking to Dessy, one of the handful of Irish people here. Behind us, a man with a radical hairstyle and an Essex accent is swaying, eyes shut, to an imaginary soundtrack, while his son holds his hand. There’s a cheer from the kitchen, as Danny puts the bra on again. Dessy and I are reminiscing about the Christian Brothers. He tells me about his Latin teacher, Brother Theodore.
    ‘A tall bastard, so he was. A tall, thin, mean bastard, with a baldy head, like a lightbulb. He’d make us mark each other’s work, then for every wrong mark we got, we’d get a thump. That way’—he paused—‘we were implicated in each other’s pain.’
    Most of us who’ve been through this kind of education say, ‘Well, it never did me any harm.’ With Dessy, I got the feeling it probably did.
    ‘There was a