The Sneaky Pint: Single Origin

Posted on September 12, 2019 / by The Drunken Poet

It might surprise some of you cretins to know that the Sneaky Pint has quite often risked life and limb in pursuit of a story. After coming home from this assignment, a few of the Poet’s top shelf whiskeys were required to still my shaken soul. The Sneaky Pint had to go deep under cover to retrieve this particular scoop, but my sacrifice is your gain, so I’ll stop complaining and get on with it.

The Sneaky Pint was due to meet a contact at The Crown in central Belfast. I settled into a snug with a pint of the black stuff and waited. My contact arrived, now you know my policy with names, so let’s call him Gerry. He looked bewildered,  as though everything he’d known to be true had suddenly been turned on its head, and for all I knew, maybe it had. Gerry was in his sixties, had a short cropped grey beard, wild salt and pepper hair that seemed to know no rules, and piercing blue eyes. He wore a navy fisherman’s jumper, black jeans and boots. As he told me his story, he took careful sips of the Bushmills single malt cradled in his hands. Gerry is in the IRA and this is what he told me.

About 5 years ago Gerry had to send two of his operatives to Australia. Gerry needed them to disappear for a while for a few reasons, but mostly he wanted them out from under his feet. You see when people join a group like the IRA, they usually have an expectation of some sort of action. Explosions, running about in the dark, driving to windy remote rendezvous, crawling through hedges; that sort of thing. So during peace time it can be really tricky keeping your members busy and satisfied. Gerry had heard of a fantastic pub in Australia, called The Drunken Poet, so he suggested they move to Melbourne for a bit, immerse themselves in the local scene, keep their heads down and if they were feeling homesick at any stage, they could always pop into the Poet for a pint. Conor and Oisin were reluctant to leave, but Gerry promised them that the very moment there was any prospect of a balaclava being worn, he’d send for them immediately.

4 and a half years later

Gerry sees Brexit on the horizon, isn’t sure how things will play out, and so he sends for the boys in Australia. Now I should probably mention here that Conor and Oisin aren’t very bright at all. A bit short in the old brain department.  Put it this way, when they originally joined the IRA, it took Gerry quite a while to explain to them that membership in the IRA didn’t come with health insurance. Half the reason Gerry sent them to Australia was because they were annoying the crap out of him. What Gerry doesn’t know, is that since coming  to Australia , Conor and Oisin have become two of the biggest hipsters you’ve ever seen.

Conor, who’s about 6ft, has a long red beard and his naturally curly red hair has been pulled back into a top knot that looks potentially painful. What almost certainly was painful, is the piercing in his left earlobe, which you could easily fit two fingers through. He works as a slow, but incredibly serious barista in a very, very serious coffee shop. Phrases like,”The Nigerian is really jammy,”flow from Conor’s lips like he knows what he’s talking about. He really doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he really believes that he does.

Oisin is about 5ft2, black slicked back hair, with a moustache that has been modelled on Salvador Dali’s, but in such a half arsed way that it’s embarrassing to everyone,  except for Oisin who’s oblivious. Oisin has taken up knitting and playing the ukulele in his spare time. He’s not a good knitter, so he’s usually getting about in a woolly hat that’s too small for his head and a vest that looks like it was made for a 10 year old, with his mid riff usually on show. He works in a micro brewery sweeping the floors, but he’s working his way up.

Well the message from Gerry arrives and the boys aren’t completely sure they want to answer the call. They’re happy in Melbourne. Life is good. Sure they’re a pair of tools, but they’re happy, harmless tools; like a pair of toy rubber hammers. In the end they decided to do the right thing by Gerry and head home. Through some sort of fucked up logic, they thought catching a cruise liner would have a lower impact on the environment than a flight home. Sure, they were wrong and it took 6 months to get home, but their hearts were in the right place. Gerry met them on the docks with steam coming out of his ears. They were a lot of “What the fucks?” and “Pair of gormless dickheads!” type comments coming from Gerry and a lot of nodding from Conor and Oisin. In the end , Gerry gave them an address and told them to stakeout the house across the street. Conor and Oisin looked at each other on the bus ride to East Belfast and quietly shat themselves. They passed the murals of red hands and the fear gripped them.

3 Weeks Later

Gerry was getting impatient. Conor and Oisin were supposed to report in regularly, but their contact had been sporadic at best. Gerry decided to drive over to East Belfast to see what the fuck was going on. As he turned the corner into their street, he noticed a bit of a crowd formed outside their house, so with 100 metres to spare he pulled over and watched. At this point Gerry’s description of what happened got pretty expletive heavy and not exactly suitable for this forum, but the Sneaky Pint will try to paraphrase. After quietly watching for a few minutes, silently and not so silently fuming in his car, Gerry got out and casually strolled up the street.

The breath was taken from Gerry as he surveyed the scene. It took all his effort to keep his jaw from dragging on the ground. Was that a coffee cart? And was that Conor serving coffees to an eager queue of East Belfast locals? WTF!? Gerry made his way to the front of the queue, ordered an espresso and locked eyes with Conor. At that precise moment, another customer asked for an East Belfast Special and Conor produced a bottle of beer from under the counter and handed it over with a wink. Conor asked his co Barista to take over and went inside. Gerry waited nonchalantly for a few moments with his espresso, listening to the locals discuss the characteristics of the Ethiopian single origin and then followed him in.

I doubt Gerry will ever recover from the scene that greeted him as he walked into that sitting room in East Belfast. Oisin was surrounded by beer bottles. Full beer bottles. He sat in the middle of them, calmly and patiently putting caps on the bottles of beer. “What the fuck are you two dickheads playing at here?” bellowed Gerry. “Well it’s impossible to get a good cup of coffee around here and so we thought…heeeeeyyyyyy coffee cart! And then when that took off, Oisin came up with the idea of selling our own beer as well, and it kind of snowballed from there.” “Snowballed.” Oisin repeated. Gerry was looking at the future.  He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. He slumped against the door, a mentally shattered man. Oisin handed him a beer, “It’s really hoppy.”

(Gerry doesn’t know what will happen after Brexit and he doesn’t care. He’s moving to Australia to get away from Conor and Oisin.)