My husband wanted to use the lavatory in London recently, as husbands begin to, and, since all the public conveniences have inconveniently been closed, he popped into the Strutton Arms. I was delighted to find that it had changed its name from Finnegan’s Wake. My objection was not the apostrophe, which, though absent in the name of the book is present in the name of the song. Nor did I want it to revert to the Grafton Arms, a name deriving I think from its former landlord, Jimmy Grafton, in whose back bar the Goon Show was invented. Before that it was called the King’s Arms. It wasn’t the name as much as the fake Irishry that was unwelcome during the Finnegan’s Wake years. I suspect it had ‘Fir’ and ‘Mna’ on the lavatory doors.
Much like those stage-Irish years has been the history of the word craic.
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