Fifty Years Behind the Counter (SIGNED By AUTHOR)

Signed by Kevin Duffy on dedication page. No other inscriptions or marks. No creasing to covers or to spine. A lovely clean very tight copy with bright unmarked boards, traces of handling and no bumping to corners. 152pp. This story is of the author's half-century behind the counters of Ireland. He captures the magic of rurality at its romantic best, swept aside eventually by the light of bulbs and the growl of tractors. Life for the farmer was even tougher then, and as Kevin seeks escape from the stones of a thirty-acre farm in Cong, we seek asylum with him behind the counters of countless pubs and shops from Dublin to Shrule. We climb walls with the young apprentice, flushed still with the sound of the dance floor - we count the shillings with him for that new jacket to impress. In time we find him opening his family shop in Kilmaine, and then his own in downtown Headford, where the pressures of married life see him turn his hand to selling exotic items, from farm machinery and Guinness to property and Hondas. We build that dream home with him beside his trout-filled Corrib and travel to many countries on business perks as the Celtic Tiger bites. Above all, we learn that it was not just the men and women behind the sheep wire, or the men behind the gates of schools, churches or barracks that made rural Ireland tick. It was really the men behind the counters who supplied the essentials of life itself.