I’m giving up facial adornment this week. Painful as it is for me, I’ve decided that my moustache has to go. I’ve had the moustache on and off for the last fifteen years, and for those of you who are curious, here is the story of how I got it.

I fell in love on honeymoon – not with my husband, because that was already a done deal, but with a tall, dark, mysterious stranger. They say that once you’ve had black you never look back, and my honeymoon was testament to the fact that once I’d tried it, I couldn’t get enough of it… Guinness, that is.

I know many people recoil in horror at the thought of drinking a glass of stout, but those are people who’ve clearly never tried a proper pint of Irish Guinness.

Pouring a pint of the black stuff is a lengthy and complicated business; there are rituals to be observed and time to be taken. It is a process that cannot be hurried. When I first went to Ireland I only drank beer in halves, because I thought it unseemly to be seen with a pint glass in my hand; but, after finishing my first delicious half of Guinness, I found I wanted another one – straight away. Straight away does not compute in Ireland, and so I had to sit like an anxious addict waiting for another shot of horse; fidgeting and fretting whilst the jaunty Irish barman did his stuff. First he had to introduce the glass to the spout, then he had to gently pump the handle: firm grip; not too slow, not too fast; and then he had to watch as the creamy Liffey loveliness whirled and swirled its way up to the top of the glass. Only, it never makes its way to the top on the first pouring. No, just as you think you are going to get your lips around a glass of Ireland’s finest, they take the glass away from the pump, give it a sharp tap on the bar and leave it, within view, but just out of reach. It’s a horrible kind of torture being a thirsty girl who only drinks halves, having to sit and stare at the object of your desire whilst it has a rest and gathers itself. Minutes tick by, and then, just when you think the end will never come, the nice barman takes your glass and fills it to the brim. The first time I saw this being done I raced up to the counter and asked for my drink - at which point the barman took out a ruler - at which point I thought I was going to have my knuckles rapped for being too impatient - at which point he took the ruler and gently levelled off the head of each of the glasses lined up on the bar. It was the mark of a craftsman; the measure of a man who really cared about the pint he was pouring - only in my case he’d only poured a half.

That was the moment I lost my innocence. The half-drinking girl blossomed into a pint-drinking woman and I would never be the same again. Tell me that Guinness isn’t the most gloriously enriching drink in the world. Tell me that for a woman, there isn’t a certain sublime satisfaction in taking a long, slow sip from a newly poured pint and then sensuously licking the creamy residue from your top lip. Tell me that Guinness isn’t good for you and I’ll lose the moustache forever.

I loved it then as I love it now; Guinness sustained me, and when I couldn’t eat, it gave me all the essential vitamins I needed. Rosie and Alice were weaned on the stuff, and when I got mastitis, I discovered that I could relieve the pain by rolling an ice-cold tin of Murphy’s over the offending bosom. The midwife was most impressed, but the man who ran the off-licence didn’t seem quite so pleased…

I have carried on my love affair with stout over the years, and until very recently enjoyed a tin of the black stuff several nights a week. My girls have become adept at pouring me the perfect pint, although Rosie at one time did think that one tin every other night constituted a significant consumption, and when asked for her choice for the weekly spelling test, opted for the word ‘Alcoholic’, An innocent-enough choice that put me right up there on the school’s list of problem parents, after being added to her unforgettable classroom declarations: ‘Mummy met a man on the Internet’, and ‘Mummy’s writing a book about sex.’ I rarely get asked to make cakes for the school bazaar, or judge the Easter bonnet competition, but that’s hardly surprising when you consider that the whole staffroom now thinks I’m a sex-starved dipsomaniac porn peddler.

Ireland is the only place where you can get a proper pint of Guinness, and so recently, when I got offered the change to fly over to Belfast to appear on a chat show, I fairly leapt at the chance. I was to be a guest on ‘Kelly’, the Irish version of ‘Parkinson’. The Kelly Show is a big deal in Ireland, so why they wanted me as a guest, God only knows. But I wasn’t about to turn down the chance to appear on a live chat show, especially if it meant that I had the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with the mahogany and the black.

My hotel was right opposite The Crown Liquor Saloon, one of Belfast’s most historic pubs. I knew that I had exactly half an hour between the time the pub opened and the time I had to leave for the airport; half an hour to savour what I’d been waiting fifteen years for – it hardly seemed enough, but it was all I had.

Appearing on the Kelly Show was a real pleasure; all of the crew were charming and funny, and Gerry Kelly was as kind and attentive as an interviewer could be. After the show was over I was taken back to my hotel by taxi. The taxi driver asked what I’d been on the show to talk about, and when I told him about the website he began to tell me the story of his life. You might think at this point that I hurried from the taxi as fast as I could, but I didn’t. I sat in his cab with the engine running, and let him unload sixty-odd years of pent-up grief.

When I got up to my room I ordered a meal from room service. I was bursting to tell somebody about my evening - that I’d rubbed shoulders with a Nolan sister, caught a glimpse of Danny De Vito’s wife and been ignored by Alex Best; but it was far too late to disturb any of my friends, so I ate my meal alone in front to the television and went straight to bed.

The next morning, after eating a full Irish breakfast, I was all ready for my pint. I sat in reception and watched as the barman to appeared in the street and folded back the intricate wrought iron gates that screened the entrance. Once he’d gone back inside I made my way across the road and into the pub. The mahogany booths were all reserved and so I had to make do with sitting up at the bar. My eyes took in the wonders of the ornate Victorian splendour, and my mouth watered at the thought of my pint. It was poured in the correct Irish manner by a young Australian bartender, and it tasted divine. I read my book and sipped my pint and thanked God for the genius of the Irish

If I close my eyes I can still taste that pint now; Guinness to me is as evocative as perfume, it has connections with all the major events of my adult life, but I’m going to have to give it up. As I approach my fortieth year, I realise that if I carry on drinking Guinness at the rate of three pints a week, then it’ll make me exactly what is says on the tin; and, love it as I do, I have no wish to become stout. So I’m losing the moustache, and it’ll only reappear when a tall, dark mysterious stranger comes into my life, takes me to Dublin and gives me a taste of what I’ve been missing.


© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.