NO shamrock?

A few months back we went to dinner with some friends at a local pub. The overall experience was pleasant enough, the waitress was as dumb as a crouton, but the food was pretty good, and the atmosphere was homey, and comfortable, important, considering we had four kids with us. There was one thing that really creeped me out though. In the whole place, there was not one stinking shamrock! Seriously, not one!

A bar, any kind of bar, without some display of a shamrock? I thought for sure that the walls around me were nothing more than a facade. Any moment and little men dressed head to toe in black with those cool walkie-talkie headphones would come out and move a few things around and suddenly I would be in George and Weesie's living room. I was actually sitting on some television set, not an actual watering hole. Although surely the union prop masters of TV land would not overlook something as basic as a shamrock in a bar? It is fundamental.

Now, luckily I was already quite pregnant, and therefore however much I was craving a pint, or even the free glass of wine that was offered with my dinner, I was abstaining. I say lucky because, in fact I cannot, in good conscience, drink in a bar which does not, in some way, shape or form, have a shamrock displayed. It's just not natural. Uncle Billy would NOT approve, and so I can't do it.

The name of this particular pub, whether it be pretension or not, I can't say, is quite genuinely Irish, which makes the absence of the green clover all that much more insulting. I don't know if the proprietors were aware that when giving their establishment a distinctly Irish moniker, they were required to give a nod to the old sod with some representation of the registered trademark of the Republic of Ireland, or if maybe they are indeed, eejits.

Anyway, I was spooked by the whole experience. I have since been assured by a certain Ignats who frequents the place and incidentally has access to some nice neon shamrocks through his employment in the distribution industry, that the oversight has been corrected. We'll see. Three more months of relative sobriety and I may give it another try.