Paul is as Kerry as it gets and remembers a time when Dingle was very different to how we find it now. He tells me about how much Dingle has changed, how they once had 40 pubs (McCarthy’s being his favourite) but not a single restaurant.
He was 10 before they got electricity and running water at home. He takes great joy in regaling his granddaughter, Kitty (9), with all of these fascinating tales. Her first question was ‘how did they track Santa’s whereabouts without an app’.
Paul’s story is wonderfully meandering and endlessly fascinating. He served 20 years in the Dingle Fire Brigade, guided tourists around the West of Ireland, sold paddy caps to Americans in Massachusetts, did Guinness Quality Control (who wouldn’t love to taste pints for a living) and even worked as a fisherman.
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