Three years later, Irene and I had become good friends and on the day we completed our theses we treated ourselves by sitting in Bewleys on Grafton Street for the whole day.

One night I went with a friend to a gig in the same Bewleys, to see a gig of a singer songwriter I had never seen before.

The singer was Niall James Holohan, who recently wrote a song in which I appeared ("Henrietta Proust") on the same recording there was a song about working in Bewleys Hotel and it had the lyric "can you bring an iron up to room three four eight"

This was the string that tied everything together for me, and it reminded me of all these happy stories and new friends, so I decided to paint it. I pulled out the old yellow iron and here it is.