Tá language barrier agam

HARCOURT Street in Dublin was relatively quiet. The night time hadn’t quite begun.

The modern bastion of Irish culture, Copperface Jacks — with its ersatz culchieness worn like a souvenir scarf by the Dubs — was yet to open. I was headed somewhere different, to an underground club.

A place where people could feel comfortable doing something that might be seen as a bit deviant if done in broad daylight: Club Conradh na Ghaeilge, where you could hear someone openly speaking Irish.