Good larder is a man's salvation. - J. P. Donleavy

Clementine climbing lonely to the rampart of the gate tower. To stand under a clear sky slowly opening from the west. Big bright stars on this moonless night. Air clean and moist. Stare up at the blazing sparkling heavens and all worldly wrong doing vanishes. Till you look down again.

What the hell have I got to show for all the time I've been over here? Nothing. And it's because of people like you. The Irish are all the same wherever they go. Faces compressed into masks of suffering. Complaining and excuses. And the Irish rasping, squabbling and bickering. Hear me? I'm sick of it. I hate it. I thought you got places where you learned to be an electrician. Good steady job. Good money. Have kids. I don't want kids. I don't want to be sucked down. And listen to some priested mick saying this is the second Sunday after Pentecost, there will be a communion breakfast next Sunday, and I want to see you all put a dollar in the basket. And every time I get a chance to get out of it, something screws me.

Of the eighty thousand things that came all at once into my mind to say, I selected the one hundred and twelfth.