Books and All Points West
There’s always been books. All my bedraggled life, they’ve been the only constant. Even Sutton, my closest friend, had exclaimed, “What’s with the f*****g reading, man? You used to be a guard, for christsakes.”
Which is Irish logic at its finest. I’d said to him then and umpteen times since, “Reading transports me.”
He said with his characteristic candour, “Shite talk.”
As I’ve said, my father worked on the railways. He loved cowboy books. There was always a battered Zane Grey in his jacket He began to pass them on to me. My mother would say, “You’ll make a sissy out of him.”
When she wasn’t within earshot, he’d whisper, “Don’t mind your mother. She means well. But you keep reading.”
“Why, Dad?”
Not that I was going to stop, I was already hooked.
“They’ll
