The Bleeding Horse

Camden Street, Dublin 2

Ah, The Bleeding Horse. What memories are conjured by that name! In the mid-nineties, a young fresh-faced Kesey worked in a software company whose offices were in an adjacent office block. It was in those offices that Kesey and his colleagues-- a motley collection of buggers, floozies, pint-stealers and drug-fiends, both domestic and imported-- localised software for The Man, and it was to The Bleeding Horse they staggered (being insufficently cool for The Odeon) after yet another late night of last-minute bug-fixing, in search of refreshment and another bitter round of that favourite office game: I Can't Believe How Badly This Company Is Being Run.

The Horse, The Horse! It was here the last vestiges of Kesey's sullen teenage rebellion were burned away, to be replaced by that pure vicious hatred that now burns in his breast for those twin evils of modern society: management and Human Resources. If The Bastard Kesey was forged in the insane stress and incompetence of that miserable software sweatshop in the kindergarten days of the Celtic Tiger, it was in The Bleeding Horse he was tempered by streams of bright alcohol, becoming the gruesome hate-engine he is today. Mark my words, when The Bastard Kesey has wreaked his terrible revenge, when he has wiped his hairy hole on everything this benighted country holds dear and made every man who ever did a business degree his bidet, there will be a plaque erected on the wall of The Bleeding Horse commemorating its part in the fall of the Old Order.

It will be a better plaque than the ubiquitous James Joyce pub award that hangs there now, that's for sure. We have commented on the tackiness and questionable taste of this particular artifact before, so the least said here the better.

The Bleeding Horse is a large pub that has undergone a lot of expansion over the years. It is also a very old pub; an establishment of this name has stood at this location for a very long time. For a few heretical years in the seventies, it was known as The Eagle but soon reverted to the old name. Some locals claim the name goes back to the days of Cromwell when Old Ironsides' brother-in-law kicked Royalist arse in the Battle of Rathmines up the road. The horses injured in the Battle were supposedly rounded up and put out of their misery somewhere near to where the pub now stands. Probably bullshit, but it makes for a good story to tell tourists.