Lads, when I received my inheritance of a quarter half acre I had plans. Big plans, well, as big as you could get when restricted to barely enough dirt to fill a pint glass. It wasn't enough to grow potatoes but there was an obvious alternative, a growing source of revenue in what was at the time a country fast embracing the tide of internationalisation.
Read any newspaper article on what makes this country tick, it'll mention tourism. All the Americans brought up on their grandparents tales of the otherworldly properties of their distant home. How fast they forgot the scorn of their English masters and the tight grip of the catholic church, every story they told their family centred around one truly Irish thing. No, it wasn't the green sweeping fields or the endless acres of wandering live stock. It wasn't the worry that hell was around every corner waiting and part of you looking forward to living somewhere warmer.
Guinness. Can any other country be so easily boiled down to a brand? People who visit buy it, get drunk and then visit the official gift shop too drunk to realize that the Euro is actually stronger than the Dollar and spend as much on a brace of t-shirts as they would an extension for their Summer home.
So, that was what was in my mind when I first received that deed for an area of land barely great enough for me to lie down in without trespassing on my neighbour. Arby, I said to myself, you haven't the horizontal to cultivate but you have the vertical to inebriate. It's surprising how little space you need to start brewing if you stack things correctly. And thus was born, Arby Ale and the Arby Ale gift shop.
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