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October 22, 2004
mmmm, malting barly
Every once in a while, I get reminded about the fact that I am not in Australia, and that I am in fact in Ireland.
That may seem like a pretty stupid thing to say, but it's one of those great things about the human condition that familiarity is not stored in a limited reseviour, to be used sparingly. It can be spread around, so that London, and Paris, and Newcastle, and Canberra and Dublin can all be familiar.
And Dublin is like that for me - I know where I live, I know what buses go there. I know where to good pubs are, and where the Essex birds go for their Hen's Nights (steer very clear). It's familiar in an exotic way.
But in the evenings, when a gentle westerly breeze is blowing, I get reminded that I am indeed not in my own country. As that unmistakable smell of the malting barley of a brewery floats across Dublin, you know that a couple of kilometres away, Guinness is being made. Fresh, lovely, dark Guinness. Coveted the world over, its being made, and I can smell it being made.
That is cool.
