and glinting with silver morning dew. Smoke blows across fields and there’s the sweet smell of turf fires. Cows and sheep graze in the fields and  I  wonder  if  these  are  the  beasts  the  priest  was  talking  about.  I wouldn’t be surprised because there’s no end to the bulls climbing on cows,  rams  on  sheep,  stallions  on  mares,  and  they  all  have  such  big things it makes me break out in a sweat to look at them and I feel sorry for all the female creatures in the world who have to suffer like that though I wouldn’t mind being a bull myself because they can do what they like and it’s never a sin for an animal. I wouldn’t mind going at myself here but you never know when a farmer might come along the road driving cows and sheep to a fair or to another field raising his stick and bidding you, Good day, young fella, grand morning, thank God   and   His   Blessed   Mother.  A   farmer   that   religious   might   be offended if he saw you breaking the Sixth Commandment forninst his field.  Horses  like  to  stick  their  heads  over  fences  and  hedges  to  see what’s passing by and I stop and talk to them because they have big eyes and long noses that show how intelligent they are. Sometimes two birds will be singing to each other across a field and I have to stop and listen to them and if I stay long enough more birds will join till every tree and bush is alive with birdsong. If there’s a stream gurgling under a bridge on the road, birds singing and cows mooing and lambs baaing, that’s better than any band in a film. The smell of dinner bacon and cabbage wafting from a farmhouse makes me so weak with the hunger I climb into a field and stuff myself with blackberries for half an hour. I stick my face into the stream and drink icy water that’s better than the lemonade in any fish and chip shop. When I’m finished delivering the telegrams there’s enough time to go to the ancient monastery graveyard where my mother’s relations are buried, the Guilfoyles and the Sheehans, where my mother wants to be buried. I can see from here the high ruins of Carrigogunnell Castle and there’s plenty of time to cycle there, sit up on the highest wall, look at the Shannon flowing out to the Atlantic on its way to America and dream of the day I’ll be sailing off myself. The boys at the post office tell me I’m lucky to get the Carmody family telegram, a shilling tip, one of the biggest tips you’ll ever get in Limerick. So why am I getting it? I’m the junior boy. They say, Well, sometimes 322