We were drinking Irish whiskey, getting in the mood. After a particularly rough spell I said, 'We could have flown and avoided this.'

'I wanted to make the crossing the way our people coming out to Australia would have done back then. No aeroplanes.'

No Jamesons or hot snacks either, I thought, but let him have his fun.

Patrick read his way through a batch of newspapers he'd picked up and kept me abreast of things in the UK. I liked the response the new Lord Mayor of London made to the standard tabloid interview question 'Have you ever had sex with a man?' Boris Johnson replied, 'Not yet.' Great answer.

I was reading Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley, the man who 'found' David Livingstone. It was interesting, particularly the stuff about the way people in those times could completely reinvent themselves. Like Stanley, like Daisy Bates, like 'Breaker' Morant. Stanley, the American, wasn't Stanley and wasn't an American. And he probably didn't say, 'Dr Livingstone, I presume.' I suppose people can still myth-make, but it must be harder these days. I looked up from the book from time to time to study our fellow passengers. They mostly seemed comfortable, even affluent-had to be to pay the bar prices. The English and the Irish seemed to be on good terms, which would have surprised and angered Granny Malloy.

We'd booked a hotel and arranged to hire a car. We were sharing expenses, but Patrick had his top-of-the-range notebook computer and was in charge of such things and doing it well. We'd agreed that I'd do the driving and he'd do the navigating. I was surprised that he accepted the more passive role and asked him about it.

'I had a pile-up a while ago, Cliff. People got hurt. I don't fancy driving these days.'

'You drove me home from the fight.'

'I was being nice.'

Dublin was cold, misty and wet but the car, a big Mitsubishi SUV, was delivered to the hotel door. We loaded our light luggage into the back and there looked to be room for three or four times as much.