You're all enjoying yourselves says the doctor yes I says, doing the bogman tango. Out with the backside, up with the nose.

One of them comes up to me one day I was hacking at the ice on the big puddle behind the kitchens and says what's going on here or what do you be at with this ice? I'm thinking what I'm going to do with the million billion trillion dollars I'm going to win, I says. So you're going to win a million billion trillion? he says. That's right, I said. Then he leans into me and whispers: Well if you'll take my advice you'll tell none of the bastards in here. They'll only fill you full of lies and let you down.

Oho! I says, don't you worry nobody's letting me down again!

Nor me either! he says, now you said it!

Then he said give me a bit of that stick there like a good man and the two of us started hacking away together beneath the orange sky. He told me what he was going to do when he won his money then I said it was time to go tracking in the mountains, so off we went, counting our footprints in the snow, him with his bony arse clicking and me with the tears streaming down my face.

About the author

PATRICK McCABE was born in 1955 in Ireland. He is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Dead School and is also a playwright. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two daughters.