1) A familiar, friendly bar to hang out in
(The Pool Bar, of course!)
2) Guinness
(Only the bottled stuff - but heck, that's better than the draught most of the time.... the further away you get from Dublin.....)
3) Irish whiskey
(Jameson's is particularly prone to being faked in this town, but Luke is pretty careful about making sure that all his spirits at the Pool Bar are the real deal.)
4) Special offers
(Luke was generously entering into the spirit of the occasion by running a 4-for-the-price-of-3 deal on bottled beers and 3-for-2 on spirits. So, naturally enough, 4 bottles [I suppose that must be around 2 pints) of Guinness and a treble Jameson's chaser became my standard order. That was 130kuai for an hour of happiness - not bad!)
5) Irish music
(Luke has recently acquired the Pogues' albums If I Should Fall From Grace With God and Peace and Love and a few other odds and ends of theirs, to augment his already sterling computer playlist. I had been meaning to bring in some more Irish stuff for him, but it had slipped my mind. This was certainly enough to be getting on with, though; and he indulgently turned the volume up for a few of my very favourites. Yes, I had a little bit of a singalong with South Australia and a little bit of a moist-eyed moment with Thousands Are Sailing.)
6) Some like-minded company
(Well, this was the 'element' I was struggling most on, since - as I complained yesterday - I was being cruelly spurned by all of my usual drinking buddies. There were, however, a few familiar faces to keep me company down at the Pool Bar - that's one of the great things about the place: a good gang of 'regulars'.)
Not the best St Pat's I've ever had, not by a long chalk - but probably the best I've yet enjoyed in Beijing.
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