As of this moment, I’ve a list of about twelve pubs that I need to get written up for the blog and I really shouldn’t be writing this thing. But for some reason, probably because I’m afraid of forgetting it, I’ve decided that I’m going to forego normal programming and commit this one to paper.

It was midweek. Springtime. I had leave to take, so a day off work was required. And while a day off work is a fine thing, it wasn’t that which made it one of these days – that was down to a combination of factors. First of all, everyone was accounted for. All my nearest and dearest were away, in work, or otherwise engaged. I had no favours to do or errands to run. The calendar was entirely empty.

The other piece of the puzzle was in my pocket – for you’re never truly free when there are pennies to be counted and set against bills, rent and whatever else. For reasons unremembered to me now, I was as flush as I’d be all year on that particular afternoon. It might have been one of those months that had an extra payday or something, but for the first time that year, I possessed actual tangible and disposable income and was able to saunter into the city centre at my leisure and peruse and purchase from shops that I had been begrudgingly storming past on numerous occasions prior.

Of course, sauntering about town, taking in a museum, or a gallery and a few shops is thirsty aul work. So, it wasn’t too long before a pint was on the cards. With tiring legs passed beyond the bustle of College Green, plans for pints moved out of their conceptual stage toward something more realistic. Passing under the portico of Grattan’s parliament – I came to stand at Pat Ingoldsby’s patch on Westmoreland Steet and realised, as I’m sure many have before me, that I was headed directly for The Palace Bar.

Before much longer, I was sitting with a pint and a toastie in the back room of the pub, thumbing through a paper, or a book or inspecting a record I’d bought. Whatever it was I was doing, I cannot be certain because I’d quickly become distracted by all that was going on around me. At first, I’d been taken aback by two considerably sized oil portraits which had been newly hung since my last visit to the pub. Painted in what this art novice would call reminiscent of a Jack B. Yeats style, they depict two of the pub’s most notable former patrons – Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien. A man was sitting under the paintings, and I was enjoying the repartee between himself and Willie, an owner of the pub, as they chatted away.

Shortly after, a few more customers had trickled into the pub and Willie returned behind the bar to serve them. At this point, I noted a gathering of middle-aged to elderly men chatting amongst themselves in the corner. I attempted, futilely, to return to my book or my paper but couldn’t help but earwig in on the conversation between the table when I hear one respond to another:

Jesus, ye went to a Beckett play. You’re a brave man.

You see, I could sympathise with this – I’d recently been to that same Beckett play, and having understood none of the first twenty minutes, found myself denied readmittance for the interval-less remainder on my way back from the toilet. Nonetheless, the lads continued. The talk turned to GAA – hurling mostly. Refrains of ‘it’s a different game these days’ could be heard after chat about a red card – with one of the men declaring that a ‘bang of a hurley was a mark of endearment in our time’.

There’s more entertainment to come when one of the group of men gets up to retrieve a fresh round for the table. While waiting for these to settle he strikes up a conversation with the man who had been speaking to Willie earlier. As they speak, in tones gentler to those at the other table, I come to suspect, through the snippets I hear and the body language between the two, that they are discussing the two portraits. This, I have confirmed when the man responsible for the round returns to his table and informs all at it that ‘that man there… he painted the two of those’.

I’m not sure exactly what compounded me to write this, as I alluded to at the outset – I’ve loads more pubs that I should be writing. I suppose the experience has just sat with me over the last few months. It was like something out of time. A moment where I fancied myself a voyeur to a sort of intelligentsia you don’t encounter too often in contemporary Dublin. Everything they said seemed to be gold. I imagined myself, in that short time, an abstract part of this irregular set of regulars – someone who was no stranger to bringing disrespect to a respectable hour by bathing it in intoxicating liquor. Unfortunately, though I was back at my desk, sober as a judge at that same hour, the next day. What’s rare truly is wonderful.  

The news came through in the same way that news like this often does – via rumour and hearsay. A friend of a friend’s workmate was “in there the other night and the barman said it’s closing in a week, getting turned into a hotel.”

I know now that I’ve let might have let stewardship of this blog go to my head – because I was far too quick to disregard this rumour when it had come through to me from Pintman №6. Too small for a hotel, I thought. I’d have heard it before now, I reasoned. But will and reason were forces not strong enough to detract from the truth of the issue – it eventually came through too many channels to be denied. The pub actually was closing. And it was closing soon. That Thursday to be precise. There was no way we were missing that.

There was just one problem, though – that curse of the drinking class, as Oscar would put it. Work. Not only was I due in the office on this particular day, but I was also already predisposed to a leaving doo that evening as well. Plans of being in the pub early were all but gone.

On the day itself, we had a number of different ears and eyes on the ground. Some would be dropping in on their lunch, or on their way through town elsewhere. Some were to be on the high stool shortly after it was permissible to clock out of their job. All reportage alluded to a bittersweet atmosphere and a brisk trade. Bits of information periodically trickled through as the day elapsed:

• None of the current staff would be retained.

• It was not bought for conversion to a hotel.

• It would remain a pub.

• It had been bought by the owners of The Kings Inn.

In time, this would all prove to be correct information but was all conjecture at this moment in time.

When at last I did get to turn the harp (turn the harp?) and make haste toward the pub, I had to battle my way to the further end of it, such was the swell of drinkers who had amassed to bid the place farewell. Wasting no time, I joined the three-deep bar and called for a pint which was dispatched with the usual skill and professionalism as would be expected in The Flowing Tide.

Joining Pintman №2, I find him cornered by a towering man. Pink in the face and as bald as a boiled egg, the man had the facial features of a baby and the slurred speech to go along with it. Pintman №2, the bigger admirer of general chaos out of the two of us, was delighted with this man’s company – joyous as he joked and equally so as he’d abruptly threaten us in a manner befitting Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Personally, I couldn’t wait to escape the giant baby and it wasn’t difficult to do so in the end. The last I saw of him was an hour or two later as all six foot seven of him was being admonished by a comparatively diminutive barman for eating too much of another customer’s cake, which was being distributed around the adjoining table.

Thereafter, we had a changing of the guards – Pintman №2 departed and I was joined by Pintman №6. He and I managed to nab an actual seat and proceeded to reminisce about the pub over a few pints. We recalled the big days and nights we’d had there: Paddy’s Days, Christmas Eves, and En-route to a wedding-days amongst them. Toasted, too, were the not-so-big visits – nondescript afterwork drinks and umpteen instances of seeking space offering better shelter to wait out the bus than that constructed by CIE.

We took time to gaze upon the fittings and furnishings for the last time, also. The Abbey posters, the Smirnoff mirror, the painting of Sackville Street with the misproportioned Nelson’s Pillar, and the chalkboard advertising the WiFi password, (Neptune, a callback to the name given to the pub’s former downstairs venue). While we half-jokingly conspired to maybe bring home a keepsake of our own, we delighted in old staff and old regulars being invited in behind the bar to have their photo taken with the barmen fulfilling their final shift.

And as we took this all in, we decided that it would be too much to hang around until such a time that the lights were flashed, and the last shout was given. There was too much of a finality to that.

And walking out onto Abbey Street, we find a city that carries on. Taxi, bus and tram whirr by on schedule. Workmen go about their nightshift tasks. Passengers hurry for last buses. Late awesome light of a clear evening in July dies, unnoticed, in the sky above. And an institute below it, already clad in scaffolding, does likewise.

Postscript

So, the pub did close. And the crowd that owns the Kings Inn did buy it. And, while we’re most certainly sad that the old guard have gone, we’re more than happy that the new owners didn’t overhaul the pub too drastically. A sensible renovation occurred over the rest of the summer and the pub reopened in October. Here’s to plenty more craic in The Flowing Tide