The hurley maker's son - Patrick Deeley

Patrick Deeley's train journey home to rural East Galway in autumn 1978 was a pilgrimage of grief: his giant of a father had been felled, the hurley-making workshop silenced. From this day, Patrick unfolds his childhood as a series of evocative moments, from the intricate workings of the timber workshop run by his father, to the slow taking apart of an old tractor and the physical burial of a steam engine; from his mother's steady work on an old Singer sewing machine, to his father's vertiginous quickstep on the roof of their house. With his descriptions of the natural world and delightful cameos of characters and incidents from a not-so-long-ago country childhood, Patrick pays homage to the fields and townlands of his youth.