An early-house starting at 7am not far from the Sean O’Casey bridge on Townsend Street. [1] It sits (reminiscent of its namesake), like an old merchant ship run aground. She holds a couple of bull’s-eye windows on her starboard side facing the bow. For aeons we were too chicken to enter, warned off by the aura of danger and the militant smokers gruffly guarding the entrance, as if touting tickets. When finally we plucked up the courage (of the Dutch variety, emboldened by a recent ramble in Ringsend, the gift of which was several of the above/preceding entries) and went in, it was to discover an innocuous drinking joint, on the large and roomy side, not unfriendly. 

A more recent revisit confirmed that it is a happy Beamish bonder, vending at four euros forty. Indeed, a chatty barman revealed that the Beamish brewers themselves once owned the pub, and that the large painting of a pint of Guinness, brazenly adorning the exterior wall, was painted over to hide the initial Beamish logo. This barman practiced a similar pouring technique to Freddie of O'Connell's, scraping foam off the glass's top with, in this case, not a knife but a doctor's tongue depressor, reminiscent of a Double Dip Swizzelstick. (What a fact - you heard that here first)! And what a Beamish it was too – creamy and coffee-ish, one of the very best in the whole course of our latter experience. 

An even more recent 2020 revisit was highlighted by the presence of a part-time barman and proletarian on the premises, a rounded and rubicund barkeep of markedly Dickensian aspect (Pickwickian, Fezzwiggian, Micawber-ish, all of the above), some sixty-six years young, delighted with regulars and newcomers alike, full of warmth and good cheer, a pleasant provider of the kind of humanistic service that grows ever rarer in these more automated times. Truly he was a sterling instance of 'The Jovial Tradesman Who Runs A Good Shop/The Jovial Tradesman Who Likes A Drop/The Jovial Tradesman Who Knows When To Stop'. And though the pint he pours tends towards the sloppy side of things, with much wastage and spillage over the side, he more than makes up for it by his quick wit (remarking of some trolleyed tourists, '‘O they were Killarneyned!’) and willingness to divulge gossip (admitting that, for some reason, the manager of The Swan 'doesn’t like me’). One customer remarked cattily on the sloppiness of the pint he received. Said Andy (for such was the name he answered to): ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs before kissing a prince!’

When quizzed about where in the city another of his preferred Beamish Bonders might be, the friendly barman’s response was unequivocally ‘The Harold House.’ Two surly regulars (who resented our having snatched their counter squats) bear marked resemblances to Robert Crumb and Alan Ginsberg. One neat and uniformed fellow nearby was revealed to be an aircraft pilot, quaffing a quick few before heading back to work. Said the merry barman: 'Would you feel safe being piloted by that man?' Said Andrew Stephens: 'FUCK NO!' - which caused the barman to bawl with shoulder shaking delight. When his busy shift had finished, he pulled a pint, called it his own, and carried it around the counter to stand with his people. He likes us and we like him. He’s as good a barkeep as any other! And when he started to leave, he did so with a massive ‘slán leat’ to each and every person in the room, his short chubby hands waving as he circled a full rotation at the door. Is it any small wonder we can’t wait to return?

Before you go reader darling, we must temper our romanticism slightly lest we be accused of leading the meek astray. You’ve had the sugar, now take the salt. At weekends when overcrowded, one or two patrons could easily slip into the ‘knacker’ category being as thin as a line of coke, fully tracksuited, sporting a tooth comb fringe and drenched in repulsive cologne. One particular scumbag continuously paced up and down, banging into us as we sat on our stools (and indeed knocked into many other patrons too), shouting all the while at an orange skinned, platinum haired female rocking a bulging buggy in the throes of a drug induced domestic dispute.

Fundamental Fact: Martin Haughey, a onetime pub crawler and incumbent of The Two Sisters pub, has stated his past intention of buying this bar. He never did. 

O

FOOTNOTES

[1] A sorry sight on Townsend Street across from The Wind Jammer is the old ruin of the past pub The Countess which has fallen into desperate disrepair. The pub, named after Countess Markievicz - stood not far from her shrine, for down the same street stands a life-sized statue of the countess herself with her lovely little bow-wow doggie ‘Poppet.’ Oh hi doggie!

[2] Though most definitely not of a Sunday – on February 2nd 2020, in honour of Joyce's 138th birthday, we attempted to do an early circuit, starting at 7am outside said Wind Jammer, only to find it most stubbornly shut, with not a peak of light or hint of a secret knock to let us in. You can imagine our disappointment, heightened when we found no luck in our subsequent equally fruitless visits to The Padraic Pearse, Molloy's, The Boar's Head, Slattery's, M. Hughes and The Chancery Inn. The reader will be relieved to read that we did eventually win an early-ish pint (but not before stopping in for a greasy breakfast in the Chorus Café of Fishamble Street - soakage for the coming) at precisely 9am in O’Donoghue’s of Suffolk Street, and a delightful nectar bowl it was too (see the entry for that pub for more)!

The lesson is learned - don’t look for an A.M. sip on a Sunday. We repeated the early house experiment nearly two years later, this time sensibly on a weekday, on Monday December 20th 2021. This time, upon our strolling in at half past seven in the morning, we found the Wind Jammer ablaze with electricity and full of health and high spirits and the love of loving (though maybe mostly high spirits, health and love were in short supply). Some six militant soaks were already in residence (one of whom, dubbed ‘Sleazy Poldy’ - he has the looks of a Bloom but the manners of a Boylan - we recognised from The Lower Deck and the RTE news, such is the city’s smallness). One particular old gremlin, singing to himself and shaking, seemed to have someone else’s face stitched onto his own - a veritable ‘Leatherface’. The place filled up fast, with construction workers, postmen and pundits all trooping in for a guilty gargle, and the witticisms ran thick and fast, too many to be properly transcribed by eavesdropping bloggers. Says Sleazy Poldy: ‘I don’t fall asleep in bars.” Pipes up Leatherface: ‘I do’.

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