I'm a romantic, I suppose. I like the shine of the granite and I like the stories. I like BTs' bed linen for the softness, that's my indulgence, and I like that I'll never see the inside of Fitzwilliam Square. I'm a Dublin man.
I used to believe that one day Maura's ring would turn up. Every little squit of doodoo I'd look for that diamond. The other week, even, in Marks's rooftop café, I was sitting there with my coffee and my pastry, and a seagull was knocking on the glass, trying to get to me.
He was trying to say something. You're the little gurrier, I said. I used to believe the ring would just turn up, that's the truth. Maybe I still do. There's hope yet, and there's always hope. It can happen. Things turn up. Some drugs turned up in my shore once, flushed down from Mountjoy Prison. But as I say, I'm a romantic, and that's just foul. But I got a reward.
No; I said to Pat once, your sister will come back to me one day, and it'll be her ring. That's how she'll come back. 'Yeah,' he said, and I changed the subject, or so Pat thought. I spoke about seagulls. Pat thinks I'm a weirdo. He's from Dungarvan, like Maura was, all the Roches; - culchies.
I said there were so many seagulls in the city, that they lived their whole lives here without ever going to sea. Why do you think that is, I said? I said I'd heard it was because of the smell of fish in the air. Pat said, 'Fish? But there's no fish in Dublin. There's not even a fishmonger. It's because of the rubbish is all it is. Dublin's filthy. The seagulls love the dirt.'
But then I heard there was fish in Guinness. And isn't the air of Dublin saturated with Guinness? Can't I smell it when the barley's roasting? And I'm a human, I have a bad sense of smell. Can you imagine what a seagull smells? I say I heard this but I was actually reading it in an article.
They were writing about it because Diageo are taking the fish out of Guinness. Vegetarians putting pressure on Diageo. Diageo, I tell you. Vegetarians. Good night, I said.
Gavin Corbett is an Irish writer
-----Gavin Corbett
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