Read Online There's an Egg in My Soup by Tom Galvin - Free Book Online

man selling shirts and slacks from a stall. I bought a pair of black trousers and two shirts with wing-like collars and a sort of flecky pattern,just so we could leave the bedlam behind us. I can’t remember how much I paid for them, but I do remember that I never wore them. We managed to pick up a few of the other items on my list, however, so it was a reasonably fruitful forage overall.
    After the market, we moved on to a couple of small stores where I got hold of a few more bits and pieces, stores that gave no indication that they were stores at all and could only be known through local knowledge. Tiny stores here specialised in the oddest things – shoelaces, batteries, wrapping paper – and how the people made a living from such wares was anyone’s guess. What would happen to them when the chain stores and supermarkets moved in – and they would – was a more depressing prospect still, even if it would prove to be more expedient.
    But from all the stores we visited that day I found only one that had foolscap paper. I needed mounds of it, because I had made the decision to complete my half-written thesis and, with no PC, would have to do it by hand. It made me feel like I had travelled back in time. By the end of that first year, I had on several occasions bought out all the foolscap stock in that one shop.
    We also visited a couple of small bookstores, where I got hold of a dictionary, a chemist’s for some drugs, and the church, of course, for a quick prayer. That afternoon I went to the woman’s home to meet her mother, whowas still alive but barely visible in a dark corner of the house. Bearing in mind that the teacher herself had retired, and was only doing a few hours’ teaching a week to keep her occupied, I was baffled as to the age of her mother. I even wondered, considering the lack of movement from the dark corner that day, whether she really was alive at all and had visions of myself being cracked over the back of the head with a spade during lunch.
    Giving me a tour of the rest of the house, my colleague told me to visit as often as I liked, adding that her home was my home and that I was always welcome. This offer, as I was to discover much later with other families, was not made merely through courtesy, but was perfectly genuine.
    After lunch, she meandered inevitably onto the subject of my weight loss, before escorting me rather worryingly to the army barracks. Standing in the doorway of a building that seemed like a large banquet hall, she informed me that you could get breakfast, dinner and tea there for next to nothing. I couldn’t for the life of me comprehend going to an army barracks for dinner, and it took me more than two years to pluck up the courage to try. But when I did I was astounded. For the equivalent of roughly two euro, you could get a full meal in a clean, warm and comfortable dining area at fixed times of the day. Families would arrive on a Sunday afternoon, or there might be people like myself,sitting alone to eat.
    Usually there were two choices of menu, which included three courses – soup, a main course and a dessert. If you didn’t fancy sitting in the main area you could head to the café/bar part, which I often did. The army officers used this area more frequently than the general public, and here light food, snacks and soups were available, as well as beer and vodka. There would almost always be a group of officers playing cards and sharing a bottle of vodka here, with a large jar of those slugs to chase it down. It would have been the perfect place to spend a Sunday afternoon reading a book and sipping a cold beer, only the air was so thick with the most pungent cigarette smoke, I’m surprised the officers even managed to tell the suits on the cards.
    It was all part of the State service, and I soon discovered that soldiers – the common privates and raw conscripts at least – are in the same pool here as the lowest