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A NIGHT AT THE CROWN It was already a battle hymn to the magic of retrospect a nicotine cathedral with a country and western band and denizens from the deeps of the thirty-two counties: family groups or, collars up, swimming at dark tables under its dusty brocades, columns, mouldings of ivy, walls clinging to heavy pub furniture from the nineties. ‘The crack was mighty at the Crown’: MacAlpine’s Fusiliers. They played Spancilhill, The Race Is On. Now a heritage mural of day labourers awaiting hire hangs on the far wall - at least it was a job for a painter - twin settees are low slung leather, a Pole’s at the bar; upstairs, once a month: jazz, or so it says on a poster. I buy a pint and slip out to peek in through the closed big doors of the back dance hall: still there, alright, as before, just shrouded for a while, but ready to burst into life again, I hope, at some turn in the weather. Once in Hammersmith I was accosted by a bad actor. He was getting drunk at a table of friends. I’d popped in on my way somewhere and perched on a spare chair. He soon convinced me he was a relaxing Irish labourer with a wink as broad as slumming Brendan Behan’s. I was just being polite, I thought, looking to get away when he revealed he was rehearsing for a future play. I drank up and scuttled out in some humiliation. Twenty years ago I used to meet you in the front bar. Now I sit at it, nurse my pint, wait for the action to begin, pull out my mobile, compose a text message to you telling you where I am right now, just guess, send it off in its little winged envelope, and make Olympic rings symbolising all the hoops I ever tried to jump through. We talked, had one drink, then moved back to the hall to listen to a kicking band still playing every corner in the quiet places I dare not enter. Cead Mile Failte.