I won't be able to drink to spread covid

That’s a grand day out altogether.

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Indeed it is. A nice grace note to an Ardkeen hospital appointment. And Downes’ to come.

I love Downes’s

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Top ten in Ireland, as we have long agreed.

Can also recommend CafĂ© Lucia in Ardkeen Shopping Centre, for a cut above the usual lunch – not to you, of course, but to the food-orientated people here, of which there are many. Nothing remarkable but still excellent, with highly pleasant staff, for what they are trying to do. CafĂ© Lucia’s virtues were pointed, inevitably, by what a ripoff food is in the hospital.

Aye they are called alcoholics.

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Downes’, Waterford.

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€4.70 a pint, which is irrelevant but extraordinary.

Boney M being played.

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Jesus, that place looks magnificent. That’s some tour of pubs. I’ve never drank pints in Waterford. We use to go down around there loads when I was a kid visiting friends of the parents (I was born in the hospital in Waterford but we lived just over the border) but I’ve only been there a handful of times as an adult (once for work and the other times for matches).

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Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Gypsy’ on now


It is nice, whatever the vicissitudes along the way, to have been born. You get to drink Ardbeg, watch All Irelands, have random Wednesdays, read Denis Johnson and Annie Proulx, eat teal


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Life is for living, and all the nice, small moments make up the big picture.

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Make sure you get to visit Thomas Maher’s and Downes’ at least once. Not 60 seconds between them. You would love both spots. Good at any time of the day.

J & K Walsh’s 30 seconds from Maher’s. Also big time worthwhile, though not at all as familiar to me.

Terrific urban slice.

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Why Beamish, might I ask? I’d say the best pint of Guinness I had in the last 12 months was in Thomas Maher’s (followed by Mary’s GAA Clubhouse in Leixlip, imagine).

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I’d usually go for a Beamish over a Guinness if there was a good draw on it

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No problem.

I drink Beamish when I know it will be good – or better than good, as in both Maher’s and Downes’. I just like the smoky wild taste. And there is nowhere in Kilkenny that serves Beamish.

I think you will generally like Beamish if you enjoy highly savoury foods, such as offal, gueuze beers, peaty whiskies and so on – and Pessac-LĂ©ognan claret, if I can be pretentious.

I went to UCD in October 1985. By earlyish 1986, I had found my feet a bit and was friends with a few fellas who had all been to Belvedere College. We started going drinking in the Palace Bar. If memory serves, a pint of Guinness was around ÂŁ1.40 at that time. The Palace, same juncture, had a pint of Beamish on special offer for ÂŁ1.05. I remember, visually, the card with the flagged Beamish price on it up on the partition as you went down to the back room.

Tried Beamish for price – stayed with Beamish for flavour. Back then, we felt we were getting every fourth pint free
 Sweet bird of youth.

Still staying with it, when I get the (high) percentage chance.

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Briliant info on Leixlip, thanks.

It’s superior to Guinness.

That would give a snowman a horn

Maher’s or Downes’? Same difference


I am on sixth. All great and a couple nudging towards savage.

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The first photo you put up of mahers was pure art