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vegetables from all over the world. ‘Air-freighted for freshness’, it says on the mangetout from Zimbabwe. ‘Specially grown for flavour’, claim the supermarket’s Dutch tomatoes. Well, what other reason is there for growing tomatoes? Speed? Comfort? An ability to glow in the dark? We import baby corn from Thailand, yams from the Caribbean, choi sum from Korea. We even import potatoes from Egypt—Egypt!—potatoes that taste like old train tickets, and pay £1 a pound for Jersey Royals that seem to grow in unusually large quantities for a place the size of Jersey, and taste suspiciously Egyptian to me. But in the midst of the global foodie culture that has swamped England in recent years, no one has thought to import Irish potatoes, one of the most delicious and distinctive vegetables in the world, and growing right on our doorstep. Bloody supermarkets. We get the tasteless shite we deserve.
    To my amazement, I’d said all this to the landlord within ten minutes of walking into the pub at the crossroads. There were only two other customers in there. One of them looked up and said, ‘Feckin’ Dutch red peppers.’
    In Dingle, County Kerry, there’s a bicycle shop that’s also a pub. You can’t miss it. There’s a bicycle in the window, and a Guinness sign above the door. And in the wild west of Cork, on the very edge of Europe, is a draper’s shop selling lengths of cloth, farm clothes, wellies, stout and spirits. And in that uniquely Irish way, this too was both a pub and a shop. I’d struggled to find it. The lanes outside were pitch black, and I didn’t have a torch. I’d been reluctant to borrow one from Mrs Goggin in case she said, ‘Scared, are ya?’ or told me I must be a great disappointment to my mother.
    It was arranged as a traditional grocer’s shop, with displays of tins, pyramids of cereal packets, rows of sweets and some tired oranges, and a large open sack of spuds that were giving off a tremendous earthy smell that permeated the whole room, as if the whiffy musicians from Cork were hiding behind the counter. There was a plain wooden counter with an open drawer for the cash, and two beer taps, one Guinness, one Harp. There were four spirits optics, next to the combs and pantyhose.
    The barman-shopkeeper was in his sixties, and a cardigan. Two of the four barstools were occupied by a bearded, weather-beaten farm labourer and a clean-shaven, red-veined schoolteacher, both old enough to remember pounds, shillings and pence. They went quiet when I walked in; not in that ‘who’s this stranger walked into the Slaughtered Lamb this cold foggy night, let’s deny everything, then take him out the back, skin him, and feed him to the badgers’ way, but simply to make room for me in the conversation. Despite the encroachment of the modern world—Premiership football on Sky TV, and microwaved Cajun chicken wings, and Recently Invented Traditional Creamy Pisspoor Irish Ale—there are still many pubs in Ireland that exist primarily as venues for conversation, and this was one of them. And I don’t even know what it was called. I was going to go back and write it down the next morning, but you know how it is. I could give you directions, though. You know the Dunmanway road? Well, halfway up there’s a tumbledown old…
    He half poured my pint of Guinness, then let it stand for three minutes, in the time-honoured way. This lets the stout settle. It also allows the barman to ask you who you are, where you’re from, and why you’re here. The other customers listen and nod. Then, he fills the pint, smooths off the head with a table knife with a parchment-coloured handle, and waits for you to take the first sip.
    And then the conversation continues.
    ‘We were just talking about that Charlie Haughey there. Used to be the Taoiseach. Y’know, the Prime Minister. Would ya know him? Ah, ya do? Well, a real slippery bastard he was.’
    ‘Sure, the man was a terrible gobshite.’
    ‘But he was a