Cormac MacConnell: Confession of a non-PC man of colour

The tinkers camped once a year at our cross, when I was a child, and the world was simpler to understand.

They had one of those lovely roundy caravans and two spring carts, and a canvas tent over hazel ribs, and we called them tinkers because the menfolk were tin-smiths of great skill, who sold items like lidded tin cans and porringers and buckets to the people of the parish.

After they moved away down their travelling road, the campsite glittered for a while with the tin snippings of their trade.