The curse of the cold pint

The Last Straw: The New York Times was reporting from Dublin during the week about the effects of the proposed smoking ban on what it called "this jovial city".

I'll come back to the ban, but first I want to say that the New York Times's sarcasm is uncalled for. I know we're a miserable bunch here, always depressed about something, whether it's traffic, prices or the temperature of draught Guinness (I'll come back to that, too). But, hey, I've seen New Yorkers on a bad day, and they're no bundle of laughs either.

Anyway, aside from making a feck of us, the article was an example of the huge debate generated by the imminent smoking ban, which it quotes the Vintners' Federation of Ireland as calling "one of the more horrible things exported from the United States".

Yes, while publicans remain unconvinced of the risks of inhaling second-hand smoke, they are in no doubt about the dangers of inhaling second-hand anti-smoking legislation, which they predict will be hugely detrimental to health (the Minister for Health, in particular).

Typical of the lobby's concerns was a warning by border hoteliers this week about the so-called Jersey effect. This is the alleged phenomenon whereby New Yorkers are circumventing their ban by taking the short ferry trip to New Jersey. An article in this paper quoted management at the Nuremore Hotel and Country Club in Carrickmacross, my home town, who feared a similar flight of customers, via the short road to south Armagh.

I think the quality of that road would deter any major exodus; it's narrow and winding, and the tar levels are lower than in many cigarette brands. But the border is an issue. I used to attend dances at the Nuremore in the late 1970s, when the traffic was in the other direction, with busloads arriving from Armagh every Saturday night, partly just to breathe the intoxicating air of the Free State.

At that time, too, many southerners used to go north for cheaper petrol, a trade that has since been reversed. But decades of price differentials have led to a high concentration of filling stations at the border, along with pubs and hotels. You don't have to be alarmist to foresee a doomsday scenario here, as busloads of chain smokers arrive, dropping lit cigarette butts everywhere, and . . . kaboom! I'm surprised the vintners haven't made this point yet.

A point that has been made, repeatedly, is the likely effect of the ban on older drinkers and on the famed oul-fellas' pub, which is part of the social infrastructure of rural Ireland and a tourist attraction, too. But my feeling is that the Government can hardly make an exception for smoking when it has done nothing to prevent another development that is also particularly resented by older drinkers. I refer, of course, to the issue of cold Guinness.

Global beer-cooling is a US export, too, and I know that the warm spell here has temporarily undermined the argument against it. But it's a rare night in Ireland, even in a heatwave, that you can sit outside a pub for any length of time without a jumper (this is the real jersey effect). I was drinking a pint outside a bar recently, on what passed for a balmy evening, and I had to switch the glass from one hand to the other every 45 seconds to avoid frostbite.

Time was that drinkers in search of room-temperature Guinness could just head for the west, which was a kind of Free State, with its own licensing laws on everything from pint temperature to closing time. Not any more.

Last month, like Gabriel in James Joyce's The Dead, I decided the time had come for me to make the journey westward. But on the evidence of my travels there, I have to report that the forces of chilled-pint orthodoxy have engulfed the entire island.

Co Clare is now completely cold, as far as I could see; Galway city likewise; and even Connemara has gone under. (If there are pockets of resistance left anywhere, maybe you'd let me know. I'll try and organise a bus.)

As I returned east, I reflected sadly that, yes, the newspapers were right. Cold Guinness was general all over Ireland. The temperature was falling on every part of the dark, central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, falling softly in pubs along the dark, mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, on every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried, and if he was a pint drinker he's better off where he is.