Chaplin’s jealously took the Blaney story as even more of a personal quest. Books on local history and even an ancient tome on the Ponse de Blaney clan formed a solid wall about his desk. He barely spoke to me, simply barking instructions as to where he wanted me to go and what he wanted me to write. One day it was an obituary for a local sporting hero, the next a double-page spread on a shoplifting epidemic in the town centre. I took it all in good spirits and tried to invest every item with some enthusiasm and a sense of the dramatic. I developed a style not unlike that which Stan Lee had used in the Marvel comics of the sixties and seventies, all heavy alliteration and pregnant pauses. I received no complaints from Chaplin, so assumed it was going down reasonably well with the readers. In the evenings Millie and I explored the highways and byways around Garshaigh. We would get into the car and drive until we were lost, then get out and walk for an hour in as straight a line as we could manage.
