Backstrap Quotes

I’ll James you, you foxy-faced drippings of a cankered __, you poxy bastarding whore’s melt, I put it to myself, and thought it worth it to hit him a belt; but, when all is said and done, I was but sixteen and he was a grown man and had come through Borstal institutions, mostly, I would say, by sucking up to bullying big bollixes the likes of Dale, not by letting his backstraps down—he was too ugly for that, but maybe some of these bastards would get a bit of a drop. I was no country Paddy from the middle of the Bog of Allen to be frightened to death by a lot of Liverpool seldom-fed bastards, nor was I one of your wrap-the-green-flag-round-me junior Civil Servants that came into the IRA from the Gaelic League, and well ready to die for their country any day of the week, purity in their hearts, truth on their lips, for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland. No, be Jesus, I was from Russell Street, North Circular Road, Dublin, from the Northside where, be Jesus, the likes of Dale wouldn’t make a dinner for them, where the whole of this pack of Limeys would be scruff-hounds would be et, bet, and threw up again __et without salt. I’ll James you, you bastard. Then the smile had to fade and the joke was rejected and the gentleness refused, never a better nor my own sweet self, and it wasn’t off the stones I licked. The old fellow would beat the best of them round our way and him only my height now, though fully grown a hell of a long time. James, be Jesus, prepare to meet thy Jesus. And I just stood up, held up a bag and said, ‘Finished work,’ and the screw nodded, though I hadn’t said ‘sir’ because I hadn’t time.

Tired of being weighted down by hope, she threw three days' worth of biscuits, cold backstrap, and sardines in her knapsack and walked out to the old falling-down log cabin; the 'reading cabin', as she thought of it. Out here, in the real remote, she was free to wander, collect at will, read the words, read the wild. Not waiting for the sounds of someone was a release. And a strength.

Now, it is possible that the ground-loom existed farther north also: to the northeast, in the steppes (where, however, large cloths to this day are by preference made by felting), and to the northwest, where it might conceivably have co-existed with the warp- weighted loom, the two looms having been specialized for different purposes. Yet the warp-weighted loom is so different in its concept that it is hard to believe that it was not independently invented, by people who originally knew nothing of the two-beam ground-loom, although they almost certainly already knew the principle of weaving under tension, as with a backstrap loom, for example (see Chapter 11