367) The Galway Hooker of Heuston Station, Dublin 8
This early-house bar is connected to the train station, and does a roaring trade with folks in transit. Coll first went there flying solo and sneaky on a Monday - a loud and overbearing voice dominated the seating area outside, issuing from a talkative Yankee who worked the room, inspiring praise from a jump-suited country gombeen who hailed: ‘This man’s talkin’ truth!’ This loudmouth Stateside blow-in had a New Yawk accent that woulda been called kinda caricatured had ya tried to present it onscreen. He was 6ft 7, said he had Mayo ancestry, professed to be some sort of writer, said he’d put us all in his stories. ‘Nixon shoulda been hung!’ he said. His helmet head of hair was the dead giveaway that betrayed his ex-Presidential ancestry, for he was surely no less than a forgotten bastard son of the Donald, possessing all the requisite genetic height and volume and obnoxiousness. He had befriended a typical Dublin aul lad aul soak who he called ‘a walking history book!’ (One thinks of the late Christopher Hitchens who once said: “Everybody has a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”)
This same aul lad aul soak showed up on Thursday when we were both there, an evident regular’s regular. (Here we resort to the notes we surreptitiously took, which have a pleasingly staccato or telegraph quality…) Overcast day. Service slow. Staff overworked. Barman called Jimmy. Eerie silence descended at one point - just when one mentioned ‘regulations’ - we must have sounded like a right pair of pub spy gobshites. One man in yellow shirt identified by Andy as having been present since 7am - his name was Fintan and his fall was tragic - he fell off his stool - blood spouts like a fountain from the cranium - staff and customers gather round him to tend him - tissues applied to head to staunch the open spouting gushing wound - ambulance and stretcher come along - a stout drinker, he lies in a pool of thick iron-rich blood - as he’s stretchered away we hear: ‘See you in the morning for a pint!’ from one particularly cynical patron as a parting shot - this particular cynical speaker had a nasty gash of a knife wound by way of scar across his malicious mug - the mark of Cain. Horrified by this spectacle, we drank up quickly and ran away.
The address to this early-house is curious: ‘26 Parkgate St, Saint James' (part of Phoenix Park), Dublin.’ Inside the impressive edifice (the west wing of Heuston Station) is a luxurious marine themed extravagance. Plush carpets, polished brass lamps and a mahogany staircase which leads to a seafood restaurant. Dolefully, Beamish no longer bonds but evidence remains that the liquid gold was once sold in the form of a circular Beamish clock - now just a relic of times past. A large dust-gatherer of a painting looms high behind the counter - a representation of the ship so named. This painting is the creation of Paula O’Connor, the kindly mother of an estranged ex-girlfriend of one of the Publopedians. All in all, the Galway Hooker is an interesting venue that attracts an interesting array of tumbleweeds and passers-through, and the people-watching is as a consequence excellent, though the aftertaste left in the mouth by the experience can be distinctly sour and depressing.
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