The Blower's Daughter

The origin of the word "Pub" is from the English concept of a "Public House".

Every village in Victorian England would have a public house, usually in the village square or centre; where the villagers would gather, mostly in the evenings after work, for a pint of the lager and to talk life out. (There would always, of course, be the hope that it transpires into more than just a pint, and more than just a talk).

So why this history lesson then? Just to break into, in a manner of the formal essayist way, of the culmination of a recent search of mine. To find one pub in many.

And yes, I think may have found a good one after all. Or changed loyalties at least for the time being. It’s a pub, a bar in the american way, 2 blocks from where I live. It’s small and it’s dark. It’s got a pool table, chatty customers, an irish bartender who gives free shots if he likes you and great, no make that fantastic, music. It’s perfect. It’s the rare kind where you can as easily read a book on a Saturday afternoon in as you can walk out tottering and yelling at 4 am from.

It’s also highly pretentious, calls itself the Dead Poet and has quotes from poets scattered all over the place. Quotes like:

May you be in heaven

Half an hour before the

Devil knows you're dead

- an Irish drinking toast

Man, being reasonable

Must get drunk;

The best of life Is but intoxication

- Lord Byron

There can't be good living

where there is not good drinking
- Benjamin Franlin

Why do I drink?

So that I can write poetry.
- Jim Morrison

To be a poet is a condition,
not a profession
- Robert Frost

Work is the curse

of the drinking classes

- Oscar Wilde

Also, if you share your birthday with a famous literary figure, you get to drink free that whole day. Google tells me I might have Jack Kerouac to thank for free drinks some months from now.

And as Damien Rice said:

“I can’t take my mind off you…till I find someone new"...