Dawson Street

And you're all very welcome to this morning's show.

On today's show, we go to Hodges Vegas in Dublin's Dawson Street to talk to Elizabeth Wassil Montague about her new novel, At the Villa Celeste, which she launched at the bookshop recently.

The novel is a haunting story of longing, memory, and the fragile architecture of identity.

When Clementine Dove begins to fall apart under the weight of familial love and unspoken trauma, she finds herself turning to France for a kind of salvation.

Yeah, we played the songs to members of the public.

So we set up a kind of a listening party in Tower Records on Dawson Street, which people who watch Primetime will see a bit of tonight.

But we didn't tell the people who were involved which of the songs had been made by which of us and how they'd been made.

And Sarah's absolutely hammered mine.

you're single handedly what a segue wrestling society back into into playfulness you should be a radio presenter I'll give it a try, but it's only for a week.

But look, tell us about the show because I know the venue in Dublin that you're talking about, that you're performing in on Dawson Street because I've been in there having a cup of coffee and I've seen the curtain and I'm like, oh my God, this is a venue as well.

This is so cool.

So explain it to people who may be from Dublin who haven't come across it or from outside of Dublin who maybe fancy something a bit different and a trip to see it.

Yeah, Glass Mask is a lovely venue.

It's on Dawson Street and it's a cafe by day.

So you walk in and it's kind of this cafe wine bar thing, very French.

And there's two or three steps up and it opens up into this big open space and there's a stage at the top of it.

It was the last full year of World War II in neutral Ireland, a placid backwater mercifully forgotten by a Europe fully engaged in rending itself to pieces.

The horse-drawn cabs and drays glissaded noiselessly down the wooden paving of Grafton Street, and the noise of the 15 tram was a faint screech in the distance as it rounded Dawson Street and Stevens Green.

Avalanches of bicycles would silently appear at the rush hours.

A bicycle was to a man or woman then, but a horse once was in the West.

Next place I went to was Ba 33, which is like a, it's like a Brazilian kind of gaucho steak place.

I think it's off Dawson Street.

I've never been there, but some of my friends, it's like their favorite restaurant.

So we went there and Paul and I shared, this dish called picanha, which is like a cut of steak.

You can extract a lot of information from the brass plate.

So it was William Jackson, 32 Dawson Street.

And because I spent so many years looking through 19th century newspaper archives, trade directories, I know that he was active at 32 Dawson Street in a very specific period of time.

And that was between 1844 and 1847.

So quite remarkably, we can date this information harp to a very precise period of time.

Just watch out because you have to go down into the dungeon basement in the bus station and there's always at the top of the stairs there there's always three tiny little yellow cones to mark the fact that it's just being cleaned.

and you chip over them and you die and that's a bad thing so just be careful doing that but at least know that if you're going from where I go you can either get off the bus in Dawson Street and go up to the McDonald's there and then satisfy your various itches but then you've nowhere to piss there you see unless the toilet happens to be open and available in the McDonald's If you stay on the bus for another two stops, then you can get off at the bus station, Bussaharis.

You can go down into the dungeon basements there and have your piss.

But then the nearest McDonald's there is 10 minutes walk at least in the dark.