To Kikenny Ireland, September 2001

New in town, I got a job at Lautrec's Brasserie....

At the Dublin hostel where I stayed for about a month in the summer of 2001 I befriended a couple of French girls who mentioned Kilkenny favorably.

In early September, with a bad job and a bad place to live, I had an intuition about Kilkenny, based roughly upon what the girls had said.

I set my alarm clock for the bus, but I missed the bus. I went to Galway.

I had a conversation in Galway with a chef who would later call me and offer me a job. I moved there near the end of August and stayed in a hostel.

The job was excruciating, the chef an insipid asshole. I only worked there for two or three days. I think it was two and seemed like three.

On 11 September, I was resting in the sunlight at Eyre Park and trying to figure out what to do. I called the number of a hostel in Kilkenny, and then decided to get on a bus and go there.

That was a Tuesday. On Thursday I was working, doing washup at Lautrec's Brasserie. That evening I went out with a couple of co-workers to Sid Harkin's pub where I met some people who would become friends.

I lived in Kilkenny for most of the next decade.