I am staying at the Clarence Hotel backing onto Temple Bar. The Clarence has a bit of a history to it. Although it was built in 1852, it was refurbished in the late 1930s in Arts and Crafts style. In the 1970s the Temple Bar area was earmarked by the local government for redevelopment as a bus station. As a result, property and rental prices fell and young artists, musicians, writers and designers moved in and the Clarence’s traditional clientele declined. Among young musicians who stayed at the Clarence were Bono and The Edge, of U2 fame. The hotel went into decline but then, in 1992 Bono and The Edge, with fond memories of former times, assembled a consortium of Irish investors and bought the hotel with the aim of restoring it to its former glory. And so it came to pass. This evening I got back around eleven and opened my window. I was almost bowled backwards by a wall of noise coming from a groundfloor bar, jam-packed full of young people, and an electric guitar school on two floors. I tried to capture the scene in the picture. The school packed up around midnight but the bar was still going strong at three in the morning – and this was a Thursday evening! Ah! Dublin nights…