IF you want to celebrate St Patrick's Day in the old-fashioned manner, you might have to go to Manhattan. Corkman Mike O'Sullivan and Michael Healy from Leitrim invested over $1.5 million to create "Thady Con", a bar/restaurant on Second Avenue which is modelled on an Irish country village - including post office, schoolroom, farmer's parlour and pub-cum-grocery shop.

Rose O'Sullivan, Michael's wife, scoured the Irish countryside for furniture. The two bars were imported to New York from Co Offaly and craftsmen from the same county carved the woodwork. Nephew Diarmaid O'Sullivan will seat you on sugan chairs and offer you colcannon, potato cakes and other faintly remembered treats from your earliest childhood.

So that's where it all went