McCarthy's Bar [antikvár]

PrologueThe harp player had just fallen off the stage and cracked his head on an Italian tourist's pint. There was a big cheer, and Con the barman rang a bell on the counter.St Patrick's Day, and McCarthy's Bar was heaving.The Eighth Rule of Travel states: Never Pass a Bar That Has Your Name On It. Other rules include: No. 7, Never Eat in a Restaurant with Laminated Menus; No. 13, Never Ask a British Airways Stewardess for Another Glass of Wine Until She's Good and Ready; and No. 17, Never Try and Score Dope From Hassidic Jews While Under the Impression They're Rastafarians, as someone I know once did on a Sunday afternoon in Central Park.There's an excellent P. McCarthy's at the top of the main street in Westport, County Mayo, where they once made seventeen cheese-and-onion toasties for five of us, all on the same toaster, and never grumbled. I also like Pete's Pub in Boston, Massachusetts, full of second-generation Irish postal workers still arguing about JFK and Nixon; or at least they were the day I spent the afternoon there and the barman gave me his shirt - a very selfless gesture, I thought, especially for such a fat bloke.But I'd chosen this McCarthy's to spend St Patrick's Day in, even though it was just a plain surname, with no P in front of it. I'd invested L149 in a three-day, two-night St Patrick's Day package from Gatwick to be here, tempted back by hazy memories of my first visit, when I really had just spotted the sign, obeyed the rule, and walked in off the street.Turned out Con the barman was from Skibbereen, just eight