I CANNOT be objective about Dublin - many of the people I love most live there and I can never stand back and admire it for its own sake, writes Charlie Harris.

It is the friendliest city I know; is packed with history; has charming Georgian architecture; boasts some of the best pubs in the world (which serve a slow pint of Guinness which would seduce a teetotaller) and is surrounded on three sides by lush, legend-ridden countryside (on the fourth side is the sea).

But for me Dublin is much, much more than the mere sum of its wonderful parts. It is a place in which I have been so happy it almost hurt, a place I can't stay away from for more than a few months at a time, the only place which has almost lured me into leaving my beloved London.

Arriving in Dublin by air over the Howth peninsular at the northern tip of the bay, or by sea towards Dun Laoghaire at the southern edge, with the magical Wicklow mountains as a backdrop, is arriving home, even though I have never lived there. Leaving takes a real effort of will: so much that is important to me has to be left behind.

Many people return to a place time and time again because they are over-familiar with it. They feel comfortable because it has nothing surprising left to reveal. I don't feel like that about Dublin, even though I am there two or three times a year.

Returning to the city 20 years ago after an absence of more than two decades, since my last visit as a child visiting hardly-known aunts and cousins, I was quickly hooked. I now know Dublin well, and feel easy there, confident as I never am in any English city, except my own. But Dublin never lets you get too comfortable, in the sense of complacent. It always has something new to show you, a twist on something you thought you understood, an off-centre way of looking at something apparently familiar.

Because of its history, Dublin seems, on the surface, to be almost an English city. Almost, but not quite. For the new English arrival, everything seems slightly out of tune. The pillar boxes are shaped like ours, and many still bear the ciphers of British monarchs, but they are green. The apparently identical traffic lights work on a slightly different cycle. Superficial differences perhaps, but hints of more subtle, deeper ones you can feel but rarely explain.

The language is English, but the syntax and grammar owe much to the Celtic mother tongue. Which brings me to Irish logic. Most Irish jokes (which, by the way, Dubliners tell about Kerrymen from the deep south-west) are based on the premise that we English are baffled by this phenomenon. It's not that it's illogical by our lights, but that it sidles up to life from a totally different direction. A friend once greeted me on a beautiful blue and gold summer's morning with the opinion that "it's far too wonderful a day to spoil it by getting out of bed".

Combined with what an ageing leprechaun, acting as a guide in a Dublin cathedral, once described to me as the "curvature of the word" (an Irishman never lies, he explained, he just bends the truth and sometimes it gets a bit corkscrew-shaped), and the unwary Englishman abroad in this enchanting city will always feel mildly confused. But, believe me, it's a surprisingly pleasant feeling.

And he'll always feel as welcome as a pint of plain in a drought. What they say about Irish eyes is true: when they're smiling they really will steal your heart. Mine's over there now, I must go and join it - soon.

Fact File

British Midland and Aer Lingus fly to Dublin from Heathrow, and Ryanair from Luton and Stanstead.

Reproduced from Limited Edition magazine, exclusive guides to living in Hertfordshire, Middlesex and the London Borough of Barnet (01923 216295).