If you haven’t a penny A ha’penny will do And if you haven’t a ha’penny God bless you. Boys tease the girls and call out, May your mother have an accident Abroad in the loo. Mam says she’d like to have a nice Christmas dinner but what can you do when the Labour Exchange reduces the dole to sixteen shillings after Oliver and Eugene died? You pay the rent of six shillings, you have ten shillings left, and what use is that to four people? Dad can’t get any work. He gets up early on weekdays, lights the fire, boils water for the tea and his shaving mug. He puts on a shirt and attaches a collar with studs. He puts on his tie and his cap and goes to the Labour Exchange to sign for the dole. He will never leave the house without collar and tie. A man without collar and tie is a man with no respect  for  himself. You  never  know  when  the  clerk  at  the  Labour Exchange might tell you there’s a job going at Rank’s Flour Mills or the Limerick Cement Company, and even if it’s a laboring job what will they think if you appear without collar and tie? Bosses and foremen always show him respect and say they’re ready to hire him, but when he opens his mouth and they hear the North of Ireland accent, they take a Limerickman instead. That’s what he tells Mam by the fire and when she says,Why don’t you dress like a proper workingman? he says he’ll never give an inch, never let them know, and when she says,Why can’t you try to talk like a Limerickman? he says he’ll never sink that low and the greatest sorrow of his life is that his sons are now afflicted with the Limerick accent.She says,Sorry for your troubles and I hope that’s all you’ll ever have, and he says that some day, with God’s help, we’ll get out of Limerick and far from the Shannon that kills. I ask Dad what afflicted means and he says, Sickness, son, and things that don’t fit. When he’s not looking for work Dad goes for long walks,miles into the country. He asks farmers if they need any help, that he grew up on 94