Beef and Guinness Stew

My first job ever, at age 12, was in a pub in Ashbourne, County Meath, as what used to be called “pot boy” (the same job Pegeen Mike hires Christy, the “Playboy,” to do in J.M. Synge’s play “Playboy of the Western World”). Nowadays that same job is usually called “lounge boy,” and it entails wiping tables and (until pretty recently) emptying ashtrays—not exactly glamorous then or now. But I loved it, and I was fascinated by an elderly couple who used to come in every day and drink two bottl