Out beyond Ballinacurra I climb orchard walls for apples. If there’s a dog I move on because I don’t have Paddy Clohessy’s way of talking to them. Farmers come at me but they’re always slow in their rubber boots and even if they jump on a bicycle to chase me I jump over walls where they can’t take a bike. The Abbot knows where I got the apples. If you grow up in the lanes of Limerick you’re bound to rob the odd orchard sooner or later. Even if you hate apples you have to rob orchards or your pals will say you’re a sissy. I always offer The Abbot an apple but he won’t eat it because of the scarcity of teeth in his head. He has five left and he won’t risk leaving them in an apple.If I cut the apple into slices he still won’t eat it because that’s not the proper way to eat an apple.That’s what he says and if I say, You slice bread before you eat it, don’t you? he says, Apples is apples and bread is bread. That’s how you talk when you’re dropped on your head. Michael comes again with warm tea in a milk bottle and two cuts of fried bread. I tell him I don’t need it anymore.Tell Mam I’m taking care of myself and I don’t need her tea and fried bread, thank you very much. Michael is delighted when I give him an apple and I tell him come every second day and he can have more.That stops him from ask- ing me to go back to Laman Griffin’s and I’m glad it stops his tears. There’s a market down in Irishtown where the farmers come on Saturdays  with  their  vegetables,  hens,  eggs,  butter.  If  I’m  there  early they’ll give me a few pennies for helping unload their carts or motor cars.At the end of the day they’ll give me vegetables they can’t sell, any- thing crushed, bruised or rotten in parts. One farmer’s wife always gives me cracked eggs and tells me, Fry them eggs tomorrow when you come back from Mass in a state of grace for if you ate them eggs with a sin on your sowl they’ll stick in your gullet, so they will. She’s a farmer’s wife and that’s how they talk. I’m not much better than a beggar now myself the way I stand at the doors of fish and chip shops when they’re closing in hopes they might have burnt chips left over or bits of fish floating around in the grease. If they’re in a hurry the shop owners will give me the chips and a sheet of paper for wrapping. The paper I like is the News of the World. It’s banned in Ireland but people sneak it in from England for the shocking pictures of girls in swimming suits that are almost not there.Then there are stories of peo- 301