At Least It Looks Good From Space: A catalogue of modern, millennial and personal catastrophes by Carl Kinsella is published in trade paperback by Hachette Ireland, €16.99

ON OUR WAY to Lahinch we spent at least an hour of sojourn in Obama Plaza, posing with the bronze statues of Barack and Michelle, eating garlic chips from the Supermac’s, and fruitlessly spending all of the coins we had on a claw machine trying to win a plushy Super Mario or some such. We set off again at around 4pm and as the overcastness of the day made for a dark evening, Conor piped up to mention that if we didn’t get there by six we wouldn’t be able to check in.

We’d spent too much time and money on the claw machine trying to win those toys. Classic ‘lad’ behaviour. We made it in time all the same, set our things down and examined the accommodation. Two rooms with two single beds each and one master bedroom, to be occupied by Johnny as a reward for driving us down. We decided who would room with whom – a ritual I have always found strangely intimate, like a sort of confession. Is it a question of which of our friends we love the most? Who we trust the most? At the risk of generalising, I believe that most men in that situation will tell you they don’t have a preference, and maybe some of them mean it. Affecting an air of having no preference is a posture that requires practice, and its evolutionary purpose is unclear. What did nonchalance do for the neanderthals when they were being chased by sabre-tooth tigers? What does it do for us now? In the end, Jamie and I threw our bags down onto two parallel single beds. Partnered for the duration of the trip. In situations like this, partnered is a word that you should only think, never speak aloud. And so we headed off to find a pub.

The young man playing his guitar in the corner seemed to be more or less our age, and talented. He’d been playing trad songs all night, it seemed. It was that kind of pub. Brass lamps, revolutionaries and old alcohol memorabilia on the walls. Do you know the difference between a traditional Irish pub and a traditional English pub? English pubs are like open-plan offices, tables laid out across the floor, evenly spaced, perfect for keeping an eye on everyone while they play bingo.

Traditional Irish pubs are more labyrinthine. Snugs, drinkers hidden huddled behind corners, ledges jutting out of big thick load-bearing pillars, steps and mezzanines and nooks and crannies perfect for planning a rising. There were four of us sitting around the table. Cormac had stayed back at the accommodation working on a job application that, a few months later, would take him out of Dublin for the next seven years and counting. I nursed a pint of Guinness which tasted like every other pint of Guinness I’ve ever I’ve ever panic-ordered when I end up in a bar that doesn’t serve ginger beer. Ginger beer was my thing then, ginger beer or Kopparberg Mixed Fruits. You know, wuss drinks. Anything sweet enough to make the joints in my shoulders hurt if I drank enough of it. I’ve matured since – now I struggle to drink anything that isn’t a pina colada. Guinness, however, has grown to dominate the panic order market.

(I have a theory about how Guinness became so popular, by the way, and it’s not about ‘splitting the G’ or the fact that they can print your face on the head of a pint when you do a tour of the Storehouse. It’s because........

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