The past is so much better than it was!

with the ageless Shuggie Murray

Trekking around the old haunts, meeting old friends in the old places and most of all, savouring the exotic blend that is the past and the present combined. I have always loved Dublin but I must admit the last few visits left me with a few ambiguities. The Tiger was good and bad. Good in that it gave everyone a chance at something better and bad because, as we are often reminded – be careful what you wish for.

I like it better now and that is not to discount the harsher economic realities but it has allowed all that had been pushed into the corners – what I think of as the heart and soul of the place – to come back out into the streets. There is a music here in the voices of the people and it is better with the voices of other lands mingling.

Dublin was never really an Irish place, built by Vikings and for a while, the Norman citadel before the English made it theirs. I wasn’t born here, coming as I did – a child of 3 but it became mine in that it shaped and formed me and I love it for that. I love the feeling I get walking between the past and the present and looking at the traces that those who were here before have left. Danes and Dutch and Spaniards and Italians – they all came and added something.

I am happy here and, as the future yawns in front of me, I hope to be able to spend more time here.