FIRST MORNING back from the ever-lovely island of La Gomera, in the Canaries, and it’s porridge with figs for breakfast; fresh figs purloined from a roadside tree as we drove across the island to catch the boat to Tenerife for our flight home.

ON a bitingly cold January afternoon it was hard to imagine a sunny June 2004 day when Moore Street Plaza becomes a resplendent showcase of downtown Dublin.