A few seasons had passed since my last visit to West Cork, so I assumed memory was playing its usual tricks when Fuchsia Books seemed elsewhere than it should have been in Schull. But no, proprietor Mary Mackey informed me that some time in the intervening years she had moved further down the street towards the centre of town.
Happily, the change of location hadn't entailed a change in either ambience or quality - shops such as this (nearly vanished, alas, from Dublin) are heaven on earth for the book lover, who can browse blissfully for hours that pass like minutes and almost always will emerge with something worth having.
In fact, Mary's shop is even better stocked and more interesting than it was before, and I came away with first editions of Frank O'Connor's Irish Miles (£8), Kate O'Brien's My Ireland (£6.50) and Sean O'Faolain's The Short Story (£10). If I'd had more time - and, of course, more money - I'd have come away with a lot more.
As it was, I was glad I'd waited until Schull to make my purchases and hadn't done so in a couple of the other West Cork second-hand bookshops - in The Bookshop in Skibbereen, for instances, prices seemed rather on the high side, and the Kate O'Brien would have set me back more than £20. It pays to shop around, in West Cork as much as anywhere else.
Prices generally weren't cheap, either, in the Bantry Bookstore, though here the stock is even larger and more varied than in Fuchsia Books, and I thought a first edition of David Cecil's 1957 book of essays, The Fine Art of Reading, too good to pass up at a mere £3. I also took away and am reading with considerable interest A Bay of Destiny: A History of Bantry Bay and Bantry, written by the shop's proprietor, Michael J. Carroll, handsomely produced and selling at £9.99.
These aren't the only second-hand or antiquarian booksellers in the area, though on the Easter Monday when I visited Clonakilty (surely the most lovingly restored town in Ireland), I couldn't locate Delaney's Books, and I never got to Pilgrim Books in Rosscarbery, or indeed to Schull Books - which, somewhat confusingly, is situated in Ballydehob.
These will have to wait until next time, when they'll provide a handy excuse for revisiting West Cork, not that such an excuse is needed.
Back in Dublin, Brendan Kennelly's latest book of poems, The Man Made of Rain (Bloodaxe), was being launched in a bank - an AIB bank, to be precise, though not the College Street branch in whose palatial interior Brendan and myself have occasionally encountered each other down through the years, he from TCD across the road, I from Burgh Quay around the corner. Apart from making our separate transactions, we both had a friend who worked there, Margaret Coleman, who is sadly missed, not just by us, but by anyone who knew her.
No, the reception was in the less obviously splendid and more banklike Morehampton Road branch, whose manager the poet has known for a long time. He's also an old friend and fellow countyman of the man who launched the book, The Hon. Mr Justice Hugh O' Flaherty, who in an earlier incarnation had been a sub-editor with the Irish Press - in fact, just before your columnist took up temporary residence on the same desk.
Others at the launch included such of Brendan's poetic peers as Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Micheal O Siadhail and Theo Dorgan.
Poetry on the DART is one thing, poetry on the loo another. However, that's the intention of Dundalk Urban District Council, who are planning to instal two APCs (automatic public conveniences to you and me) that will not just be of great immediate - indeed, urgent - benefit to the citizens of the town, but will be a positive adornment, too.
They'll be even more of an adornment when Dundalk UDC get round to featuring poems in the two poster panels on the outside of each loo. To this end (sorry about that), they're asking poets resident in the area if they are interested in having their work displayed in this innovative way.
Scoffers may think it a crap idea, but my only worry is that passers-by who stop long enough to give the poems proper consideration could be arrested for loitering. On the other hand, such artistic attachments might have given George Michael a handy - not to mention convenient - alibi.
I see that William Trevor and Ann Walsh, adjudicators of the 1998 Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award, have come up with that rare thing - a shortlist featuring three novels about whose merits no-one would argue.
The novels are John Banville's The Untouchable, Sebastian Barry's The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and Bernard MacLaverty's Grace Notes, the prize money on offer is £5,000 and the winner will be announced at the upcoming Listowel Writers' Week.