Seven o’clock in the morning in the Bahamas.


I have been sitting here for over an hour, the sun is just rising, how good is that? I am just sitting here whiling away some time reflecting on the past and my mind wanders to Ireland and in particular to Dublin. My good friend and ex colleague Richard and I had a few working visits to Dublin which never failed to be eventful.


As we were the customers on these trips the guys over there always treated us well attempting to keep us entertained during our stays. On one of our earliest trips Trevor the top techi over there was designated to take us round some of the sights of Dublin so he recruited his associate Martin and off we went on a cultural tour of Dublin.


The first stop was at O'Donoghue's pub, the place where the Dubliners folk group started playing and still my favourite bar in Dublin. We had maybe a Guinness or two in there handed out by a guy who stands on the bar and reaches over everyones head and passes two pints with each hand without putting his fingers in the glasses.


Then it’s on to Temple Bar and fleeting visits to every pub we hear Irish music coming out off, of course by now both Richard and I are being very careful with our Guinness as we naturally don’t want too many as we have to work tomorrow. In fact we are being that careful that so far we haven’t spilled a drop. And then finally later that evening we decide we need to eat and pile into the first Chinese restaurant we come across, to be fair it didn’t need to be Chinese it just needed to be somewhere to eat, it could have been a burger from a van but fortunately it wasn’t.


We order some starters and the crispy duck, essential after a night on the Guinness and then Trevor says “and four bottles of Tsingtao”. He was then told that the restaurant didn’t do beer they only did wine so Trevor looks at the waiter as if he should automatically know what to do and sends him off for four bottles of wine. That got us through the crispy duck but more was needed for the main course. Eventually and as it turned out not too late we wend our way back to our hotel via a couple of late night bars thanking Trevor for the cultural tour.


The next morning I probably had a slight hangover but after a full Irish breakfast including the white and black pudding I get to the office along with Richard and we settle down to do some work. No sign of Trevor or Martin they have obviously not been able to make it in this morning so that’s one up for the Brits, we have seen them off. Well it seemed that way until lunch time when Trevor who has been working in a different office pops his head round the door and says “coming down the pub for Guinness?” One up for the Irish, I have to decline, although I think Richard maybe thought about it but decided we had too much to do although it went against his competitive spirit to not to join them.


But five o’clock sees Russells open so it’s a quiet Guinness and a read of the papers before we walk back to our hotel. Unfortunately we have to pass three more pubs before we reach it and it seems unsociably not to try them. But never-the-less it turns out to be a reasonably early night, the right side of midnight anyway. I like to believe that Trevor didn’t make it past eight o’clock but he probably did.


All that reminiscing has given me a taste for some more Guinness but I haven’t seen any over here, I must have a look on boy’s night out on Friday. This is good Christine's just brought me an iced tea, if I play my cards right I can sit here till sun set. It's a hard life!