Re Doyle’s pub.
No Gummy Francis and Eddie were definitely brother and sister.
Here’s an old friend of mine, Harry Dee, a ballad singer with a voice on him like a corncrake, but that doesn’t bother him, we were discussing the finer points of traditional Irish music in Doyle’s when Phyllis took this picture, that’s her pint in the foreground, this was about the year 2001. As that great writer Flan O’Brien wrote in his comedy “The Brother” “A Dublinman treats his pint and his missus with complete indifference, unless one, or both, are knocked down in his presence"

Before you start slagging me shirt it was a present from Phyllis’s sister Maisie who brought it all the way home from Hawaii, she was there that night so I had to wear it and later I had to get on the stage, wiggle my ass and sing “Honolulu Baby” specially for her.

Here’s a little piece about Doyle’s, which was built in 1860 using some of the granite blocks left over from the beautiful St Peter’s Church just up the street from it, this extract is dated 2011, so many lovely pubs have closed down here since then, it’s a bloody shame.

“It gave its name to a famous Dublin landmark, now one of the city's best-known pubs, John Doyle's of Doyle's Corner in Phibsboro, is sending a shiver down the spines of city publicans by going on the market with a price tag of €850,000 -- an 80 per cent drop in the price it was sold for five years ago.
Doyle's was sold in 2006 for €4.2m, at a time when some local house prices were fetching €850,000
Two of Doyle's most famous patrons in the past were writer Brendan Behan and hangman Albert Pierrepoint who, on 'business' trips to Dublin in the Forties and Fifties, would enjoy a pre-execution double whiskey in the snug of the bar.
Ten years ago, when Doyle's was a thriving music venue, it made the national news headlines when it was reported that a noisy ghost was living on the second floor of the pub.
Alas, nowadays, the ghost has the empty second floor bar all to himself except for the occasional party”
(By Tom Pendeville, Sept.11, 2011)

Did you notice we had to import a hangman back then, nobody here would do the job. Behan wrote about Pierrepoint in his play “The Quarefella” I think there was a scene in the play where someone spots Pierrepoint in the pub an a scuffle breaks out, the hangman was lucky to get out alive, that could well be a fact, Mountjoy prison was just down the road from Doyle’s.
Now there's a lot of info crammed into one post, well someone has to balance out Spitty's word rationing, I'm off now for the day, see yis all later.

I am away for the week, somewhere calm,


an Irish blessing chums

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Hello Jem
I have a thought, don't faint now.
I will post the history of my area, it is fascinating stuff.
I will do this tomorrow.

I hope it has nowt to do with Anatomy.