Growing up in Dún Laoghaire in the 1980s, I remember all the hard men were sinewy, scrawny lads, hence the local description ‘more meat on a seagull’. The reason was simple: they were undernourished. … The young wans, despite a couple of babies, were more or less the same, pinched, flat-chested and drawn.

She's a great matchmaker, said Kati. And a matchbreaker too, added the Count.

The nightly invoicing job abended at 3 a.m.

I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing.