Kilkenny Ireland 2001

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

After a while, a coworker got me a job at Moody Cool's, up on John Street where it's not now.

After that folded into itself, I was a bit out of work for a while. I pulled some Christmas trees, I remember — and I remember, too, that my finances were poor that winter. I was poor.

But it was a good time. I was living upstairs across from the pub Syd Harkin's. Syd's was the "local" for the people I'd met on my third night in town — and it was local for me in a literal way.

I'd gotten the apartment from an acquaintance of a coworker, there at Lautrec's. The place was a shithole, but it was mine, and I stayed in it for a year-and-a-quarter. Sometimes water came through that hole broken out of the kitchen ceiling. One time I flooded the computer shop underneath me. That, I would do again.

I got a job at Breathnach's pub, working as a "chef" (cook.) I lasted for two days — one-and-a-half.

I got a job at Kyteler's Inn, working as a "kitchen porter," or dishwasher. That lasted two weeks.

I got a job at Heaton's, a small department store in the Market Cross Shopping Centre, in February of 2002. This was after the introduction of the euro — fortunately. The transition would have been grueling, there at the cash register.

I worked at Heaton's for about seven months. "That's a long time for a job like that," said one hippy girl I met.