Why didn’t I come to the dance with herself and her friend? I told her about my feet. She said I should drop my bag and come to the dance as her child was asleep in the house and her aunt and her aunt’s son were coming to babysit until she came back from the dance. I said that was all right with me, I would just go to bed. But that was the problem, she then told me, there was only one room where they could sit and that was where the sofa was.

The Gardaý´ had become impatient, and began to blow the horn of the car. I told her I would be happy if I had somewhere to sit down and at that very moment the aunt and the aunt’s son arrived. The woman said she’d see me later and went to rejoin her friends in the Garda car. I was now at the mercy of her aunt and her aunt’s son. I looked at them. I wanted to sleep in the room they wanted to sit in. The son turned on the television, the aunt went to make tea. When she came back I suggested to her as politely as I could that she and her son could go home and I would babysit.

‘And have the child wake up and see you?’ she peered at me.
‘Well, if you told me what to do,’ I said feebly.
‘You’ll just have to wait now until the dance is over,’ she said
firmly. ‘The child would get an awful fright,’ she said,

looking over at meagain. She poured the tea and her son switched the television from channel to channel. It was past one in the morning and there was only tennis on the box. ‘We’ll not bother with that,’ he said and turned it o.....We were now left to our own devices. We discussed the festival, the closing of the hotel, my birthplace, my business, until the aunt asked: ‘Do you do the amusements?’ I didn’t know what she meant. ‘The amusements,’ she repeated, and her son examined me carefully to see what I would say. ‘You know, the amusements, one-armed bandits, slot.