A Few Drops Short of a Pint

With 700 pubs in Dublin alone, the Irish have no shortage of places to enjoy a pint of the black stuff. Guinness is very big business. Distinctive black delivery trucks scurried around the city carrying large kegs to the pubs. Advertisements were played regularly on TV. There were large posters on bridges, buses and billboards everywhere. In Dublin, the Guinness harp symbol is far more pervading than the Golden M of McDonalds. Chris Dowding lived a quiet, solitary life as an engineer in Brisbane that only began to change when he met his future wife Kerryn who, after their wedding, persuaded Chris to move to Ireland - to a new beginning. A Few Drops Short of a Pint is the hilarious account of Chris and Kerryn's Irish experience. Capturing Chris's fascinations, frustrations and fears (did you know 58 percent of all motor accidents in Dublin occur during the day, in high visibility conditions with dry weather, on a straight road?) in his new surroundings, the story covers Irish lifestyle issues ranging from water heating to violent political factionalism. While exploring Ireland, A Few Drops Short of a Pint is also a powerful story of self-exploration and discovery, showing that sometimes a change of circumstances is all the therapy we need. Jubilant and demoralized in equal measures, this is a story oozing with razor sharp (and often self-deprecating) wit that beautifully captures the experience of transplanting yourself into a foreign culture.