What do you do on a day off in Dublin these days? I like to wander around anywhere between the two canals, looking for forgotten sights and streetscapes that may have seen better days. This leisurely pastime also lets me catch up with the colossal changes that have taken place in the capital over the past decade.
A recent trip took me to Henrietta Street - once one of the best addresses in Dublin - whose imposing Georgian structures now appear as if they are seriously sagging with the weight of their long history. Some houses looked abandoned. Others have been cannibalised to provide "period" fittings for homes elsewhere. But it's still a pleasant exercise to stand amid what remains and imagine the grandeur that once populated this small but sadly forgotten street.
Mountjoy Square
From Henrietta Street, I walked to Mountjoy Square via the recovering thoroughfares around North Great Georges Street and Denmark Street. Mountjoy Square is unrecognisable from the "bombed-out", end-of-the-world place virtually everybody avoided during the 1980s and one wonders what the vista from here down Gardiner Street looked like during its Georgian heyday well before slum-clearers got their hands on the place.
With my legs tiring, I decided to stop for a pint. It took another while to get to the establishment in question - a place once described in a film as "the best pub in Dublin". If ever a bar could be called "a relic of aul' decency", this is it.
It was worth the extra walk when I saw the place was almost empty. I ordered a pint, watched it settle, took a gulp and opened the paper. "Pub, pint and paper," I said to myself. "Now you can't get much more relaxing than that."
As soon as the paper was opened, however, a conversation started among a few locals in a nearby alcove. One of them began going on about "the asylum-seekers" who were "shagging the system senseless" with their "sponging".
"I mean," he went on, "these darkies, niggers, bleedin' Bosnians and whatever you're having yourself. . . [laughs] they're all driving around in cars and have mobiles. Tell me, where did they get the money for that? Yours [gesturing at himself] effin' truly - the complaint taxpayer! And where the hell did they learn how to drive?
"But what I really want to know is if anyone is checking them for diseases when they come here? They could be bringing all classes of illness - AIDS, TB, you name it - into the country. No wonder they're always top of the queue in the hospitals."
The monologue continued in the same vain - apart from a call to "bring back the chain-gangs for the druggies" - for the next 10 minutes or so without too much disagreement from those sitting around the table.
Group of men
Just then, however, something truly marvellous happened. The door swung open and a group of six men walked in, one of them black. I dismissed the thought of folding my paper and leaving before trouble broke out - and anyway curiosity as to what might happen next got the better of me.
So I ordered another pint and, in the process, caught the eye of one of the new arrivals beside the bar. His face was familiar, but I couldn't place him. When I approached the bar to collect my pint it struck me.
"You're Frank Lampard Junior," I said. "Yeah, all right mate?" he replied. Then Lampard's former West Ham and England team-mate, Rio Ferdinand, for whom Leeds United paid a £18 million sterling last season - turned around from the bar to say hello.
Despite being a little star-struck - after all, Ferdinand is often compared to the great Bobby Moore - I recounted the story of my one and only visit to Upton Park when Paul Ince, a former West Ham player, togged out for Manchester United against his old club. To say Ince received a warm welcome from the home support is to wildly understate what transpired - he got dog's abuse.
Cheeky lad
"Yeah," said a young guy at the bar with a London accent, "that's when they threw the bananas at him." Ferdinand, himself black, shot the precocious youngster a dirty look, but then we all laughed and left it at that. The cheeky young lad, I later realised was Joe Cole, for whom Alex Ferguson allegedly offered £3 million when Cole was only 17. England expects a great deal of him in the future.
After I returned to my seat word got around that a few very talented professional footballers were beside the bar enjoying a pint of Guinness. All the previous talk of "darkies" and "niggers" was put to one side and out came the visitors' book for the players to sign. They obliged with courtesy, respect and good humour.
With the atmosphere in the pub now jovial, pub I began to think about the term volte- face. I didn't have another jar; it was time to go.