1 Hunter-gatherers, written 2015. All true to life.
2 On Ilkley Moor, written 2015. Autobiographical.
3 How I Learned to Love the Police, written 2015. Told exactly as it happened.
4 As the Cicada Sings It, written 2012. True to my childhood observations, and to J.-H. Fabre, Souvenirs Entomologiques, 1879–1909.
5 Contrescarpe, written in the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, 2011. Quotes from L’Astragale, Albertine Sarrazin, 1965, and Contrescarpe, Julien Sarrazin, 1977.
6 Byzantium, written 2015, amended 2018.
7 The Centre of Gravity, published in Archipelago, 2015; autobiographical apart from the ‘note’ forming its centre of gravity.
8 The Gods of the Neale, published in Archipelago, 2013. My adventure occurred in 1979, is truthfully recounted in the first section, and successively departs from truth in the second and third sections.
9 Where are the Nows of Yesteryear? Inspired by argumentation overheard in the Moral Sciences Department, Cambridge, in 2011–2012, and published in Connemara and Elsewhere, ed. Jane Conroy, 2014. The famous query, ‘Where are the Snows of Yesteryear?’ is due to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, after Villon.
10 The Tower of Silence, written 2013 and published in Connemara and Elsewhere, 2014. The first part is factually correct, and all the items of human interaction in the second part were observed by the author as recounted.
11 Parallax, written 2012 (?). The description of my father’s mannerism is true to life.
12 Shadows and Eclipses, written 2016. The description of seeing the egg in the museum and its subsequent disappearance is true to facts, but there is no indication of the origin of the lecture that crashes into this episode.
13 Orient Express, written 2012. Autobiographical up to the moment of decision, after which – diagraphical might be the word.
14 Two Cries, Two Cliffs, written 2016 and strictly factual.
15 Backwards and Digressive, autobiographical, written 2015.
16 A Land Without Shortcuts, written 2010–2011 as the Parnell Lecture; delivered in Magdalene College, Cambridge, 2011; published in the Dublin Review, Spring 2012.