Acknowledgments

This story was finally written up for my children, as a warning shot, as they passed through their adolescence. I want to thank them for encouraging me to polish it up and polish it off. Others have encouraged me too, and they know well who they are, home and abroad. But the clearest debt I owe in seeing this book into print must go to Terence Brown, who first saw it had the makings, and next to Antony Farrell, publisher extraordinaire, and then to my compatriot Jonathan Williams. My editor Brendan Barrington tamed all wilfulness from my pen with the lightest of touches and sharpest of minds, and I’m much beholden to him.

Two of the poems here were previously published: ‘They so rarely reach here now’ as ‘Greylags’ in Brangle, and ‘Riddle’ as ‘Corncrake’, by the Sycamore Press; both appear in Nevermore (Carcanet, 2000).