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lucky a Greggs pie shop. It was exactly the same in 1982.
    It turned out that the first thing Julie and her new English boyfriend Harry had done was discover that instead of getting a job, you could go on the dole – free money! This country left France in the dust. I immediately signed up for some. Sadly, somewhere along the line I must have told the wrong lie or, perhaps, cardinal sin, the truth, because I never got any dole money. Part of me felt like giving up and just heading back to Ireland, but because I was so sure that money would be shoved into my hands, I had spent all that was left of my summer savings, so I was, in effect, trapped in London. I would have to get a job.
    This was at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland and there had just been bombs in London, so it really was not a great time to be Irish and looking for work. Place afterplace turned me down. I don’t know what possessed me, but I finally went into a restaurant called Rockwell’s American Diner on the piazza in Covent Garden and announced in a strange accent that I was Canadian and my name was David Villapando. It worked, I got a job. I would start the next night. I never thought I would actually look forward to wearing a stripy apron and a paper hat.
    The name was not pure invention. David Villapando was the name of one of the pen pals I had in school. While all the Malaysians and Germans had fallen by the wayside, I did still correspond with David. He lived in Whittier, California and, surprise, surprise, was struggling with his sexuality. What complicated matters slightly when I showed up at the restaurant for work was that nearly everybody who worked there seemed to be from Canada. Where was I from? Where did I go to school? Did I know Cindy Bloggynuts? This was going to be slightly harder than I’d thought. Being a consummate liar, I used the age-old technique of distracting people from one lie by admitting to another. I confessed I wasn’t Canadian. I was in fact from Whittier, California but had to lie because I didn’t have a work permit. My secret was safe with them, they assured me.
    For the next six weeks I had the time of my life. With money in my pocket and an extended Canadian family, I went out drinking and clubbing every night. I bought bright orange clothes and had my hair cut in a ‘Salon’. Truly this was my beautiful life. Sadly it was someone else’s. I was going to have to go back to Ireland to start my second year.
    On my last night in the restaurant I was put on washing-up duty. I couldn’t have been more upset – washing-up was boring and you couldn’t chat to anyone. My glorious summerand career shouldn’t be ending like this. So it didn’t. I didn’t do any washing-up. I simply hid the dirty dishes and pots and pans all over the restaurant. Even as I did it I felt guilty for the poor sods who would come in the next day and find an old lasagne tray in the laundry basket, but this was my special night.
    When I got back to Cork, it really was a case of ‘How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’ I was miserable. What had seemed glamorous, exciting and fun to me in the first year just a few months earlier was now, in comparison with my summer, dull and wretched.
    The months dragged by and I did nothing to help myself. I moved into a rancid bedsit that was in the attic of what was essentially a derelict building in the centre of Cork. People would break in to have sex in the hall out of the rain. Once I came home to find a rat lying dead on the stairs about halfway up to my flat. If it had been on the ground floor it wouldn’t have upset me so much but its early grave proved that rats were capable of climbing stairs. It was just a matter of time before I would wake up staring into the tiny beady eyes of one of its fitter relatives.
    It was also in this flat where I started finding hundreds of flies – big heavy winter flies that seemed punch-drunk. I killed them