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There's something about the smell of Dublin city on a cold evening. If you're lucky, and the wind is right, the James's Gate brewery fills High Street and Christchurch with the odour of new porter cooking, the air good enough to eat. If the breeze is the other way, the faint taste of salt comes in from the Bay, fresh and invigorating, chopping waves up in the muddy grey river, chapping dry lips. And often, in the vicinity of a pub, the warm smell of smoke and beer colliding in the open air is an alluring perfume. In this town, any way the wind blows is an excuse for a pint...

Ritual is important to the beer drinker. On Saturday, when the day had worn down to dusky twilight, I'd take the 54 bus from the long, lonely Tymon North road, stuck into a corner seat at the rear, upstairs, over the rattling heater. The bus bounced along the peaks of Greenhills to Walkinstown, took the roundabout in a wide swerve to Cromwell's Fort, stopped at the lights by the K.C.R, braked heavily on the sharp, Kimmage Manor bend, and joined the steadily decreasing flow of traffic at the Harold's Cross junction. It reached over the canal bridge before Clanbrassil Street, then wound itself up Christchuch Hill to the cathedral, until, as if knowing that the end of its journey was near, it rushed down through Dame Street to a brief halt outside the Central Bank before it disappeared in a cloud of diesel fumes at College Green on its way to the quayside terminus. When the smoke cleared, I'd be standing on the pavement, like the product of some magician's trick.

Then it was the quick step across the traffic, gingerly on wet pavement slabs to Andrew Street, quiet in the evening; half along Wicklow Street, scuttling by hidden Clarendon Street chapel at the back of Switzers department store; down the alleyway beside and in through the Westbury's new shopping mall, out of the rain, before emerging like a king in Harry Street, opposite the Weights & Measures, and Brendan Behan's old pub, to the finish line. Such a race developed the thirst.