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EXTRACT:THE DIFFERENCE between town and country in a small place like Portlaoise was impossible to ignore, if only because the line, like the frontline of a battle zone, was constantly shifting and therefore under constant observation. Kids who cycled in from the country one week cycled home the next to the near edge of town, thanks to a terrace of new houses or a sprinkling of new bungalows which required the ongoing revision of our mental maps, writes PAT BORAN

Outside of these troubling liminal zones, however, the differences between town lads and country lads were to us so patently obvious as to be almost beyond consideration. Town lads and country lads dressed differently, spoke differently, moved differently, as if their very skeletons and muscles were assembled and subsequently had developed in different ways. Town lads walked in straight lines, and their feet and legs and even the cheeks of their backsides had acclimatised to this movement; country lads on the other hand lolloped and swung, their distinctive gaits and long wide strides clearly the product of the open spaces to which they were heir.