So I walked down to Peter’s house with my fifty euro. I knocked on his door and he let me in. He made me tea. His house was nice idk it was warm and there were two comfortable chairs and an open fire. He was burning his own turf, I saw. I asked him about a shop and he said the nearest shop was eleven miles away, my dad would have to drive me. I said my dad wasn’t well and he was sleeping a lot, he had a stent put in. Peter said the stent was mighty, his own brother had one, before he was hardly able to stand up out of a chair and afterwards he was taking long walks on the beach every day. I said my dad was mostly asleep all day. He had sleeping pills they gave him. Peter said nothing. We drank our tea.

I’ll drive you out to the town, he said.

I said I didn’t want to put him to any trouble.

Sure I have to go out anyway, I have to go to the Post Office.

His favourite TV programmes were Masterchef and Strictly Come Dancing. Strictly was brilliant the way you had these leggers who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other and at the end of the series they could dance on an egg-box. That was the whole thing about it, the sense of achievement. Ballroom dancing was all the rage when he was a youngster. The priests didn’t like it of course, but them boys were against anything. If the clergy had their way there wouldn’t be a child born in Ireland from the coming of St Patrick to the present time. Supposedly they were against it because it was foreign. Great saviours of the Gaelic way of life were the clergy. But sure wasn’t the Latin foreign too? And Christianity itself? It’s not like Jesus started his ministry in a bog in the West of Ireland. And if he did, things would have taken a different turn and there might have been less burning at the stake. It’s very hard to set fire to a person with turf.

I liked to hear Peter laughing.

It’s lonely enough at times, he said, as we turned into the village. And sure if you ever think of marrying a bachelor farmer with a pension when you grow up, you have my mobile.