Some days nothing happens for hours on end. I am working through the estimable Mr Fry’s book on writing poetry, with a view to reviewing it, and to make it an utterly fair review (what with me and my cups and medals) I have roped in a complete novice at the poetry lark to see if he cares a gnats’ tonker for it. This may take a while. I am writing a ghost story. I am therefore regretting having lent my only copy of the Ghost Stories of M R James to an unworthy and now unreachable Croatian (if by chance you are reading this, send it back, you swine). I am going to work in an office with no air conditioning and indeed no air to condition. The heat is making me very stupid. On writing, I have very few ideas at the moment. So while we wait, how about another Irish anecdote?

It is a bright windy morning in Dublin. We are sitting outside a little cafe on O’Connell Street, having breakfast and eyeing the new and utterly weird sculptures of dancing rabbits parading up the broad central plaza of the street. Someone sits down at the next table. We are wrestling with a street map of the city and bickering amiably about what museum to do when. Someone clears his throat in my ear. I turn. I am gazing at the brownest teeth in Europe. Clenched between them, an un-filtered cigarette, or possibly a burning twig. They could well be attached to a human male. Then again, it could be a cluricaun. A hungover one at that.

‘It’s tourists you are? And isn’t it our lovely city you’re admirin’?’ (I am not making this up. This is how he spoke). He then tried to explain something important about the bizarre rabbits, but I think the near-terminal nicotine poisoning was disarticulating his speech. Finally he cleared his throat and said: ‘Where have you come from?’

‘England,’ I reply, redundantly, in my sadly ringing and cut-glass Home Counties voice.

‘And are you Catholic or Protestant?’ What? My dad used to tell an old joke about a man being mugged at gun-point in Belfast. ‘Are you Protestant or Catholic?’ demands the thief. ‘Neither, I’m Jewish!’ cries the victim desperately. ‘A Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?’

I get a grip.

‘I’m Jewish,’ I say firmly. And slightly dishonestly*.

There’s a long pause.

‘But you do believe in Jesus, don’t you?’ he asks plaintively.

Dear readers, before I could get away, he was promising to say a rosary for my heathen soul every night.

*I am actually a Jewish-Catholic Atheist of finest vintage. And I still inadvertently cross myself on entering a church, which invariably puts me out of temper.

Posted by Reed on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 5:31 pm.