335) Saints and Scholars Lounge (Wynn’s Hotel) of Abbey Street Lower, D1

We had attempted to take a pint here once before, but as we found ourselves waiting too long at an abandoned bar, a waft of hot crap came to the fore causing us to turn and flee without a soul as our witness. (We went instead across the road to one of the many moderate Madigans). Our second attempt came many years later on a cold afternoon in December. Yet again, we were made to wait at an unmanned bar, however we soon spotted a young barkeep stoking the coals at an open fire, and on this occasion the odour was not so offensive for us to take our leave. We ordered two pints of Guinness at a very undesirable €5.50 apiece and sat up again’ the bar.

The central bar will be found flanked on either side by a dozen dinner tables and food is popular and sloppy. The bar’s principal feature is a trinity of stained-glass windows making a shrine to some of Ireland’s very own saints and scholars. As we tried to identify all fifteen personages we came up a couple short. Luckily for us, a toothless yet jovial old man (to be herein called ‘the Masticator’) was more than happy to help out (as was the baby-faced barkeep) and thus we were able to complete the list [1]. The bar has two ominous square pillars covered in mirrors, one on each side. As these mirrors stand facing each other, they create an infinity effect of a curved kind – enough to blow the mind of any middling drinker. 

A trivial fact which ought not to be omitted: both bar and restaurant are much celebrated among ‘country bumpkins’ as an oasis in the heart of the concrete jungle. But we, being a pair of jackeens, couldn’t help but see it as a jungle of bumpkins.

We were nearing the end of our pint when a matured lady bobbed her way to the bar talking passionately to nobody about groceries. Next to pass was an elderly couple who were heard to ask for a set of face cloths with their mushroom soup. And all the while the Masticator was satisfying himself lustily by sucking on his chips. We were beginning to get a feel for the place. One was enough.

FOOTNOTE

[1] From left to right, top down: Window One: Samuel Beckett, Oliver Plunkett, Seán O’Casey, Brendan Behan, Jonathan Swift, Saint Brigid of Kildare. Window Two: James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge. Window Three: Pádraig Pearse, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Saint Laurence O’Toole.

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