Green Door

The photograph is of the door of an old music shop on one of my favourite Dublin thoroughfares, Capel Street. This is a street dating from the late seventeenth century even though the buildings, for the most part, have eighteenth century facades. These are punctuated, here and there, by Victorian pubs and modern offices. Nothing is particularly out of place and nothing has particularly changed over the past two hundred and fifty years - with the exception that the street has taken a decidedly downmarket air.

In the eighteenth century it was a fashionable parade with dukes and dandys strolling along and purchasing lottery tickets - wealth was a given and the people inhabiting the street led unimaginable lives to the 'mere' Irish as they were known. Along the way gentlemen in frockcoats pranced, ladies sauntered and servants dashed invisible.

Meanwhile five miles in any direction from this spot people lived in abject poverty and suffered a series of famines in the lead up to the Great Hunger of the mid-nineteenth century. This was when over a million people died in five years.

Over the passing centuries this brilliant avenue began to drift from the raffishness of the lotteries to gambling clubs and side street inns. Gradually a middling crowd took over and the great public houses such as Slattery's appeared and provided a convivial pleasure for real working class Dubliners. In between grocers, tailors and merchants plied their wears only beginning to lose ground as the late Victorian suburbs spread outwards dragging the better class of customer with them.

The Rising against Britain, the subsequent destruction of the city centre by the Empire and the catastrophe of the Civil War played out within an ass's roar of the street and pushed the wealth of the area further downwards.

In the 1930s the route was famous for haberdasheries and builder's providers as well as furniture. The Emergency, as the Second World War is known in Ireland, killed off another layer of businesses and the street saw the erection of some new out of character buildings as planning and design were luxuries that the country could ill afford. Emmigration sapped the lifeblood of the island. By the 70s, when I first remember Capel Street, it was reduced to a steady stream of furniture shops, a well-known garden shop and an equally famous tailor. There were some less than salubrious pubs as well. All was snarled up in the beginnings of the angry love affair between Hibernia and the car. Come the 1980s, stripped pine showrooms with bunkbeds lined up on the footpaths became a common sight - readily parked to scoop up the baby boom. Then crazy happened.

Sex came to Ireland! Sexshops appeared, protests began, the church ranted, little old men railed, rosaries were proffered and yet these purveyors of sin survived - albeit dyslexically - Uthopia (and perhaps they are).

But through it all from the 1920s onwards this little shop sold musical instruments. Fiddles to be loved and played and the soul of the street resided in that brass handle as musicians, decade by decade, came to view and buy lutes, guitars and all manner of melody makers.

Now the shop, too, has passed.

Warsaw Rose

I really like travelling and seeing new places but have learnt that what the location looks like often comes a poor second to how it feels. An important part of the atmosphere of a place is the way in which the locals treat you. When away on business or pleasure I usually travel alone which if you have never done it - can only be guessed at. You learn to take things easy and actually work out what you want to do for yourself. Small and nondescript activities become defining moments.

The twenty minute chat you have with the exhausted owner of a kebab shop on the Damrak at twenty past four in the morning where he tells you of his Lebanese brother's sons who like me are 'Irish' - because they go to Notre Dame (proud motto the fighting Irish) in the States.

Or the Spanish woman in the tourist centre who, having handled two irate customers who screamed at her, laughs when I wind her up and promptly sends me to stay with her sister-in-law in a stunning Art Nouveau castle leading down to the beach. It's these passing moments, the kindness of strangers as Blanche would say, that are when local culture truly comes into it's own. The least is expected and the most is gained.

On one of my trip's to Warsaw during an extremely warm summer I asked a young chambermaid whether she could find me some bottles of water so that I could take them with me during the day. She smiled shyly and left - returning quickly with an armful. I thanked and tipped her. I thought no more about it and set off in a taxi to visit customers all day.

Later, worn out from the heat, I returned to my room and I found this gift of a Warsaw rose from her on my bedside table.

For me, that's Poland.

Glasgow

Scotland gets it's name from the ancient Scots. Confusingly in Early Medieval history the Irish were known as Scots. Thus when they decided to colonise South West Scotland they gave the North of Britain a new name. The Scots are great, warm, friendly, positive people with killer senses of humour. Scotland was one of the first places that I visited when I lived in Britain. The acres of resin perfumed pine forests, the craggy oaken slopes, the magnificent peaks moodily surveying mile after mile of landscape always attracted me - as did the medieval cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

For my PhD I studied the ancient woodlands of the West Coast of Scotland and spent time doing research in Edinburgh at the National Library. It was a time that I really enjoyed and when I felt I was doing something important by ensuring that the last remnants of the ancient wildwood were recognised and protected. The people in the Scottish Forestry Authority as well as the Department of the Taoiseach were incredibly supportive. Due to that experience and visiting amazing beautiful landscapes, meeting friendly and helpful people and getting a chance to experience the rhythm of Scottish life has always tied me to the nation closest to Ireland and yet so different.

I went back for the first time in 12 years in May 2009 and had a really good time of it. It was my first trip since getting ill last summer and a great way to start travelling again.

Glasgow reminds me a lot of the Northside of Dublin. Buchanan seems like Henry Street, the Galleries like the Jervas and the ILAC like the St Enoch Centre. The best streets are the ones that fashion and time have forgotten that carry memories of older days - years when Glasgow was a workshop of the World, when she launched ships that patrolled the Empire, when Clydeside fought back against the Nazi's - when the metropolis burned. Here are a couple of images that I took that gave me that feeling.

London

London is one of the most interesting and ancient cities in Europe. It's home to a diverse collection of art galleries and museums, old buildings, threadworn monuments and landmarks - not to mention shopping, restaurants, pubs and clubs. This all adds up to ideal photo-hunting. My favourite part of the city, since my first visit in the early 90s, is the River Thames.

For Dubliner's the River is reminiscent of the Liffey in the way that it splits the capital in two - yet on a bigger scale. Nowadays the waterway is constantly busy with all manner of craft and activity. There are the large clippers that wend their way up and down stream, occasional sail boats lazily drifting along and motorboats that power noisly past the bridges. Occasionally you will see black clad soldiers in high speed inflatables in fast pursuit of unclear targets - the SAS practising. Further inland the grim head-quarters of MI5 oversees the river.

It's the bridges, though, that are most memorable. My picture, above, is of the Millennium Bridge that forms a path between Tate Modern and Saint Paul's. The bridge inspired much amusement in the British media when it first opened. Pedestrians who strode it in 2000 discovered that they were taking part in an impromptu trampoline event. The crossing was closed and reopened much later following the installation of shock absorbers. Below is another bridge, this time more elegant, and behind it some of the iconic buildings of the financial centre including the Gherkin and the Old NatWest Building (the tallest visible). I had a meeting in the latter ten years ago somewhere near the top floor. Oddly the meeting room had flock wall paper similar to that of my parent's sitting room when I was a kid. It didn't really feel like Master of the Universe stuff surrounded by my parent's idea of home comfort. No one was standing on the meeting room table shouting 'show me the money' either! It was pretty cool, though, standing in the clouds watching helicopters circle below and spotting Wren churches which punctuate the city grid.

Another trip to London with my sister over a year ago introduced me to the Thames Clippers. It was a rainy day (in Old London Town) and we decided to sail down the River - passing Parliament, H.M.S Belfast, Tower Bridge, Greenwich and ending up at the Thames Barrier. From the River the views are impressive and at times the trip feels like the Disney guide to London. Here is a picture from that trip showing the 1932 Cruiser which saw service in the second world war and later in the Korean war. The ship was made in Ireland in the dockyards of Belfast, capital of Northern Ireland, by Harland & Wolff and was launched on St. Patrick's Day by Mrs Neville Chamberlain. Given her husband's success with that 'piece of paper' it's just as well that Mrs Chamberlain launched the ship. Back then Belfast cost £2.1 million. She provided cover for the Arctic Convoys to Russia. The ship also figured in D-Day when the Allies landed on the beaches of France. She provided protection for the men who ran up those beaches into enemy fire.

I was once told by a 70 year old man how he had charged up the beaches of D-Day. He and his best friend were in the same boat that scrambled onto the beach. Once it berthed, they had orders to run like hell, not stop and to not look back. The boat hit the beach, the gate dropped and he and his mate ran. As he powered up the beach he could hear bullets whistling past him and all around - adrenalin took over. Even as he did he heard a smack and the sound of a dull thump. Later, when he reached shelter a little further inland, he realised that that was the sound of his friend's lifeless body hitting the sand. He told me that story as if it had happened earlier that morning - except that morning had been forty years before.