Hey Frank, ya gotta minute?

Not now, I’m thinkin’

I was having a couple of pints in a pub not far from Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin one Wednesday evening not too long ago. A small and sweetly squalid pub - little more than a wide room with a U shaped bar in the middle of it. I was the only customer. Just me and the barman, who I had never met before. A small television was fixed to the back wall, high above the bar. He turned the volume up when the six o’clock news came on and Sharon Ní Bheoláin began to inform us of the important issues of the day.

The barman was standing beneath the tv with his back to me when he said, “I think Sharon must have been drinking a lot of milk lately.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” I asked.

“Because her tits are definitely looking bigger these days,” he replied.

He didn’t follow this comment up with anything. And did not speak again until my Guinness was almost gone and he asked me if I wanted another. Sometimes it is strange, the things that you hear in pubs.

She ruined his life.

“A thing like that. It’ll have been suckled.”

Spotted in the wild.

Mount Jerome Cemetery. Dublin.

Wellington Quay, Dublin.

Went to the Nick Cave gig in Vicar Street last night.  Fucking superb.

Picked up a signed copy of the new book and even snagged some free sachets of Bunny Munro brand hand cream on the way out!

A brilliant, brilliant gig. So good that it couldn’t even be ruined by the caustic Australian woman who, during the extended Q&A, rather rudely asked Cave whether he thought his new book was misogynistic or not, before being forced to admit that she hadn’t in fact read the book at all, but, not to be outdone, then tried to back up her misogyny accusation by referring disparagingly to the projected backdrop of a fully clothed woman dancing.

Cave was very polite, but eventually told her that he was “fucking offended” by her accusation. She continued to caterwaul from the balcony for a few more seconds before eventually being booed into silence by the crowd.

I was a bit drunk . . . but I’m almost certain this actually happened.