My sister started secondary school in 1968, three years before me. She brought home Exploring English I, a collection of short stories, mostly by Irish writers, edited by Augustine Martin. On Saturday mornings we took turns reading the stories aloud in the bed we shared. The stories in Exploring English were different from anything I had read before. Unlike the adventures of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, and the stories in the weekly Bunty comic, these brought me to a familiar world, with people who lived lives not unlike mine in rural Monaghan. Reading Brian Friel’s ‘The Potato Gatherers, I felt the numbness of Joe and Philly’s fingers and the stiff ache of their stooped backs as the excitement of missing school wore off and the day working for a local farmer progressed. I heard the rattle of the tractor and the heavy thud of potatoes hitting the metal bucket, lead grey like the November sky, and saw rows and rows of potato drills stretching endlessly ahead. I too had watched the short hours of daylight fade, longing for the Saturday’s work picking potatoes on a local Protestant farm to be over, when, aged ten or eleven, I would be paid ten shillings.