I first arrived in the Fair City on a cold Saturday night in the infant days of the third millennium. I was tired, heart-broken and basically broke. Dumping my case in the hostel, I took the taxi drivers advice and made my way to the nearest pub. A couple of pints and a little flirting later I began to feel better, but being on a tight budget I could only stay an hour.

Back in the hostel room the other three complete strangers I was sharing with were fast asleep. German students by the look of the gear strewn around the place. Without bothering with evening ablutions I stripped to T-shirt and shorts, climbed into the top bunk and without even a glimmer of a thought of the last disastrous year fell into a long dark sleep.

The room was flooded in bright winter sunlight when I woke. My watch showed 7.30 a.m. Peeking over the edge I was met by an empty room. The kids were up and gone. Shit. Lost the chance to show off my German. Still, it was a beautiful morning and after a quick communal shower and shave and a “continental” breakfast in the tower of Babel I grabbed my camera and hit the streets.

Dublin, the old strumpet, was arraigned in her finest that day. Walking down South George Street the red-bricked buildings enclosing the old market glowed in the liquid light. The early-morning streets were almost empty and it felt as if I had the city to myself. Crossing Dame Street, I strolled through a hung-over Templebar down to the Liffey. Over the Ha’penny bridge I turned right onto the North Quay and walked up across the end of O’Connell bridge, past the Customs House and on to the harrowing Famine Monument. I sat for a while at the monument, wondering if any of my Irish ancestors were among the million who fled the Great Hunger.

I turned back along the North quay and walked down to the Four Courts where I crossed the river again and back into Templebar. Everywhere were beautiful buildings. Some obviously restored but many others exhibiting an exhausted magnificence beneath the neglect of decades. The Templebar I returned to was gradually filling up with tourists and the local predators. I treated myself to a pub lunch and an entertaining couple of hours watching Dublin Sunday afternoon pub life.

I returned to the hostel well fed and watered and generally at peace with the world. The next day I would start my new job in a city I knew I was going to fall in love with. And though I hated to admit it, Steff and Gunter had been right to hassle me out of Germany against my protests that I would not submit to Life’s 10 yearly force of change (my Decametamorphoses). For, as they both pointed out, if you don’t obey life you don’t live.

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