'They weren't gypsies.' He sounded annoyed. 'They were Irish Travellers.'

That was interesting and news to me. I'd only met my grandmother a few times when I was a kid. She was old, very dark, very wrinkled. I remembered that she shook her head and told my mother that I'd have an interesting life but wouldn't make any money. I guess she was right on both scores. I hadn't made the money. My mother always referred to herself as a gypsy and played up to it with scarves and rings and bracelets.

'Sorry to be so abrupt,' he said. 'Look, why don't we get together and have a drink and a yarn? I can fill you in a bit about the Travellers if you're interested. To tell you the truth, you're the only relative I've got left in the world.'

Why not? I thought. I asked a few questions and learned that his surname was Malloy. That figured. It was my grandmother's name and my mother's, her being illegitimate. He told me his age. He was a year younger than me. We agreed to meet the following day in the late afternoon at Kelly's Hotel in King Street, Newtown.

'I'll shout you a Guinness,' he said in exactly the kind of mock Irish accent I used to put on to the annoyance of my ex-wife, Cyn.

With time on my hands and not wanting to appear too ignorant, I did some quick web research on the Irish Travellers.

Not Romany at all, it appeared, but indigenous Irish, the descendants of people who took to the roads centuries ago, no one quite knows when or why. Nomadic like the gypsies, followers of appropriate trades-like dog and horse breeding and selling, holding market stalls, dealers in second-hand goods. They apparently had their own language and customs and there was a strong musical tradition among them. That fitted Granny Malloy all right, who could sing like a bird in old age and play the fiddle. My mother had the same talents and I remembered her using odd words that she said she picked up from her mother. I'd assumed this was Romany talk, but maybe not.