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sheepshed, recently converted into a three-bedroom holiday cottage, with open fires, old wooden furniture, and iron bedsteads painted bright as Clonakilty High Street. Mr Goggin showed me round, blushing every time I asked him anything, even though it must have been clear there was no chance of my asking him to impregnate me. Just not used to strangers, I suppose.
    He’d done the conversion himself, with a dozen or so of the older children. The paint had been dry two days. There was a booking next week, but now I was to be the first guest. The children were sniggering, and muttering to each other behind hands. I noticed they all had extraordinarily rosy cheeks, as if they’d inherited their daddy’s blushes as a permanent physical feature. The air of impudence, though, definitely came from their mother’s side.
    She was in the cottage sitting-room as we finished the tour. She’d lit a peat fire, and somehow had produced a loaf of soda bread, still hot from the oven. She smiled and introduced herself, and politely offered me her hand to shake. So I shook it.
    ‘Sure, ye can see ye’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life.’
    She was fingering the soft palm of my right hand, with a mischievous, possibly demonic, glint in her green eyes. As an opening conversational gambit to a paying guest, this was breathtakingly original. The conversational ball was now firmly in my court.
    I withdrew my hand and looked at the callus-free palm. I caught a glimpse of Mr Goggin edging towards the door, foetal with embarrassment, and decided to lie.
    ‘Well, you know, there’s not a lot of manual work involved being a sales rep. Mostly just sit in the car. You know.’
    You could see the repmobile through the window. There was a hanger full of clothes dangling by the rear window, which added authenticity to my story.
    ‘I suppose ye spend a lot of time parked in laybys, pretending y’ere on appointments.’
    Two of the reddest kids were watching through the window now, gurning menacingly.
    There was the sound of a latch as Mr Goggin finally cringed through the door, followed by a sigh, or it might have been a whimper, from outside. Then Mrs Goggin was suddenly gone, before reappearing like a genie on the other side of the room. ‘Here are the towels and bedlinen.’
    ‘Oh. Right.’
    She was all smiles now.
    ‘Would ya like me to make up the bed?’
    Too bloody right I would. What did she think I was paying ₤18 for? Time to let her see who was in charge round here. ‘Oh. Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.’
    Just for a moment, she leaned back and narrowed her eyes.
    Then she said it.
    ‘Lazy, are ya?’
    Nothing can prepare you for this kind of thing when all you’re doing is booking some accommodation, a transaction that in most countries and circumstances is emotionally neutral. But I don’t think there was anything malicious about Mrs Goggin; she was just interested, and not in possession of the mental filter system most of us put our thoughts through before they emerge as words. She just said whatever popped into her head.
    ‘Well, I’ll leave ya to it. I’m sure there are things ye’ll be wanting to do ,’ she said, with what seemed to be a pornographic leer. Then suddenly she was gone, only to return almost immediately with a wild salmon steak, and salad and potatoes, and a bottle of stout, and eight or nine of her small red daughters, who stood giggling in the doorway at the strange man who was paying money to stay in their sheepshed.
    ‘There y’are, now. Ye look as if ye’d be needing a decent meal. If ye like to take a drink, and I’d say ye do, there’s a pub below. Beyond the crossroads there. God bless, now.’
    An Irish potato is a wonderful thing. Dry, fluffy, bursting with flavour, it bears no relation to its English cousin, which tastes in comparison as if it’s been grown in a dark factory and over-watered with too much watered-down water. Yet in England these days we import