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into a story of a mercenary on the run from the East German police when you’d just finished a book about a boy who had magic shoes.
    They farmed sheep there and occasionally we’d have to help out, acting as auxiliary sheepdogs when the sheep were being herded, or taking lunch out to the shearers when they clipped them in a nearby pit. There were actual dogs as well and we’d be so bored we’d dote on them to a degree they found exasperating. These creatures had to have a complex skillset—able to run after sheep on a hill but also to put up with little children who wanted to make them wear a blouse.
    The highlight of every week was the arrival of the baker’s van. This guy drove around the middle of nowhere selling cakesand sweets and stuff, and we would clean him out. We’d be sitting on rocks with nothing but fields for miles eating these bright purple or luminous yellow cakes. Every Sunday a wee bus came to take everybody to Mass in the local town of Dungloe. Mass was crushingly dull and sometimes in Irish, but afterwards you were in town till the bus left. A proper town with sweets and penknives and toy guns and footballs.
    Dungloe was famous in Ireland for its annual summer beauty contest called ‘Mary from Dungloe’. Irish communities from all over the globe would contribute fresh and conventional-looking examples of their gene pool. You’d have a Chicago Mary and a Glasgow Mary; who knows what their real names were? The whole thing was exactly like Father Ted’s ‘Lovely Girl’s Contest’ and everyone for miles around seemed obsessed with the thing. One year a local girl won—Moia McCole, the Donegal Mary. She lived at the bottom of our hill and everybody was really excited. They drove about at night honking on their car horns and there were big bonfires and parties. The Sunday World printed a photo of her where she was leaning forward a little too far and you could see her nipple. I cut it out and had a wank behind a big rock.
    There was a peculiarity in that part of the world whereby people sometimes had a second name related to their job. I guess it started because so many people had the same first names and surnames. The guy who delivered the post was Dimrick the Post. There was a baker in Dungloe who my mum’s family knew as Anthony the Cake, but my dad’s lot called Anthony the Bun. Itwas great meeting people who were called the Van or the Loaf. It was like a whimsical branch of American wrestling.
    Often we’d get driven to the pub by my uncle where we’d drink something called ‘Football Special’ in life-threatening quantities. We particularly loved it because it had a head on it like a pint of beer. Looking back it was actually a thick chemical scum. It also meant that we were basically drunk on sugar.
    The main pub we went to was called Tessie’s. It was a rundown place with a stone floor and barrels in the corner. On cold nights you all sat in Tessie’s kitchen by the fire. Everybody played a card game called ‘25’ for tiny stakes—fifty pences was about the limit. In reality it was just an excuse for people to curse each other and the games were always accompanied by explosions of laughter. They’d curse each other for playing their hand badly or too well, for winning too much or being a sore loser or a cheap bastard or just a bastard. One time some American tourists wandered in and asked if they sold low-alcohol lager—they asked half a dozen drunks playing cards on a barrel as a dog ate crisps off the floor. After a disbelieving pause everybody screamed with laughter. This wasn’t just rudeness; nobody there had heard of such a thing as low-alcohol lager and it sounded like a ridiculous contradiction.
    We kids loved going to the pub and would get really upset on the nights the men would go without us. It’s possible that we were cripplingly addicted to the sugar high. Some nights we’d go to bed then hear the car leaving the drive, so we’d run out after them. We knew we