‘The dogs are treated better than the wives’

One rule today, I say to myself again. No judgments. My first coursing meeting will be all about the occasion. Rights and wrongs for another day.

“Go up that hill, you little daisy.” The first brace are out of the slips, or so the fella says. Gazing across at the Comeraghs, feeling the first promise of spring, by chance at least I was looking in the right direction.

I flip through the mental dictionary another time. Buckles. Slips. Box men. I’ll need help here to make any fist of this. Former Irish Coursing Club president Tony McNamee, a genial Kilcullen man, as if there was any other kind, is the sort of fellow that would patiently explain the job at hand again, even after you had painted the wrong wall of his house.