ply Board and a house that’s a disgrace.You’d look at this house and never know there was a human being living in it.You can see Laman never moved a thing since his mother died and now we have to clean up so that we can live in this place. There are boxes packed with bottles of purple hair oil.While Mam is out in the lavatory we open a bottle and smear it on our heads. Malachy says the smell is gorgeous but when Mam comes back she says,What’s that horrible stink? and wants to know why our heads are suddenly greasy.She makes us stick our heads under the tap outside and dry ourselves with an old towel pulled out from under a pile of magazines called The Illustrated London  News  so old they have pictures of Queen Victoria and Prince Edward waving.There are bars of Pear’s soap and a thick book called Pear’s Encyclopedia, which keeps me up day and night because it tells you every- thing about everything and that’s all I want to know. There are bottles of Sloan’s Liniment, which Mam says will come in handy when we get cramps and pains from the damp. The bottles say,  Here’s  the  pain,  Where’s  the  Sloan’s? There  are  boxes  of safety  pins  and bags packed with women’s hats that crumble when you  touch  them. There  are  bags  with  corsets,  garters,  women’s  high button shoes and different laxatives that promise glowing cheeks, bright eyes  and  a  curl  in  your  hair. There  are  letters  from  General  Eoin O’Duffy to Gerard Griffin, Esq., saying welcome to the ranks of the National Front, the Irish Blueshirts, that it is a privilege to know a man like Gerard Griffin is interested in the movement with his excellent education,  his  Royal  Navy  training,  his  reputation  as  a  great  rugby player  on  the Young  Munster  team  that  won  the  national  champi- onship,   the   Bateman   Cup.   General   O’Duffy   is   forming   an   Irish Brigade that will soon sail off to Spain to fight with that great Catholic Generalissimo  Franco  himself,  and  Mr.  Griffin  would  be  a  powerful addition to the Brigade. Mam says Laman’s mother wouldn’t let him go. She didn’t spend all those years slaving away in a little shop to send him to college so that he could go gallivanting off to Spain for Franco so he stayed at home and got that job digging holes for the poles of the Electricity Supply Board along country roads and his mother was happy to have him home to herself every night but Friday when he drank his pint and moaned over Jean Harlow. Mam is happy we’ll have loads of paper for lighting the fire though 280