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Hazari also for Christmas. I love Rob Iure first time cooking the dinner, but at least it's for a smaller crowd. I'm the same. Jane mentioned getting her crown, but I don't know if that's a hint for a present or something to do with the turkey.

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Sounds like you need more help than I can give you, should you say, for chatbot. But it has lots of recipes and cooking advice. It's on Facebook, Alexa and Google assistant. You're a lifesaver now.

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I better get my prince and princess home. See you soon. See if a chocolate is the real life saver. Happy Christmas.

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The Pot Candy Show on news talk with Marter private network during current restrictions. Don't ignore your health concerns. Our expert team is ready to help. Now, entrepreneur, developer, man about town, Harry Crosby, good morning. Good morning. First of all, you are to be congratulated because you have not been idle during the pandemic. You've been busy. You've been doing stuff online about Dublin furniture and Irish furniture.

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But you've also put pen to paper. You've become an author. Explain.

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Yes. Well, it's not in my nature to be idle. And a couple of the big jobs I was working on were sidelined. And I was sitting in a little cottage by the sea in Wexford and I was bored and I said, I read so much, I wonder, can I write? So I wrote a little story. Then I wrote another one and I brought it up to the Lilliput Press, which is run by Anthony Farrell, whom I met at lunch in Paul McGinniss's house.

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And he was telling me about the making of old books, properly made books, handmade signs on books. And when I met up there, his editor and partner Jim read them and she said, these are quite good. You should do a few more. So at the end of the story was and said, we do it enough to make a slim volume, which we would give the profits to the father. McVerry. And I said the only condition was that I want to make a proper old fashioned handmade hardback book and so that children could handle the book, probably who never actually had an old fashioned proper hardback book.

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And we wanted to make it and we're putting it out for twelve euros, which is about half of what it should be. It doesn't matter what's in it, which is probably rubbish, but the book itself is the star of the show and the star really is Lilypad Press because they have made this beautiful little piece of art and craft, which is a piece of art in in itself together about what James and I would strongly urge any parents or anyone who wants to buy a really unusual, nice, tiny little present for a good friend, something that will last for many, many, many years, get out and buy one of these or even better by six of them, because it's very beautiful and they're done by craftsmen, open lilypad press.

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We want to make sure that whatever they do doesn't die out.

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Harry, you're being far too modest, because when I read one of your stories earlier in the summer and I thought it was very, very good, I didn't realise there were going to be more.

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And I would, you know, put this in the category of Damon Runyon, who wrote Guys and Dolls about all the ways guys in New York City, the Mafia guys, and you're writing about Dublin Darkland.

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I mean, if James Joyce had Dubliners, I think Harry Crosby has Ducker's.

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It is people with the most unforgettable characters.

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Yeah. Did you like us? Did you. Did you. I loved it. I loved it. And I want to give our listeners a flavour of, you know, what it's about, because the characters I mean, there's a fellow called Harry O'Reilly.

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And by the way, the book's title is Under Nose Farm. And we'll talk about what exactly is on János Farm.

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But the question I'm asking myself is, all of these characters, are they pieces of your imagination? Are they real people? Is this a memoir? No.

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First of all, it's written through the eyes of a 15 or 16 year old smart aleck, John Phillips. Not that I was a smart, honest person, far from it. But anybody who's working on the docks in the summer for his father, he's a cheeky bastard. And that's who's telling the stories. The stories are kind of a little bit true. You know, there really was a farm on yard which nobody knew about that, where people down there who did all these things.

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So they were written and embellished, but they were written to to entertain. And I didn't realise that I could write. And I still am not sure that I can say whatever. We've already sold the first edition out of a thousand more starting on the second edition today and was up for sale at the cafe. Hates the cafe owned by my wife down beside the broadcast theatre and they're on sale online with Lilypad Press Start IHI and they are the real stars because what you're buying is a beautiful, beautiful piece of art.

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It's a beautifully made proper, old fashioned and every time you've already sold it.

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Well, Harry. But I want to try and capture some of the characters. I mean, everyone had a nickname.

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I mean, there's a fella called Lino Y because he always lay on the floor at Roll-Up Y because he loves sweets, you know, and all of these nicknames, everyone in the docks seemed to have a nickname.

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Well, you see, the docks before containers were a completely different place. There were thousands of people working there and there was the casual labor read in the morning right outside the Point Depot. If people listening will remember the three bears that stood there, which, by the way, I gave to the children's hospital. And they are they now have a lovely field of wildflowers around the book. Used to be it was a degrading thing. And even in the rain, at eight o'clock in the morning, there'll be thousands of men and anybody who didn't get work went home soaked to the skin.

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And one of the great things that have happened is that indignity of being sent home with no work has been swept away. But the world is now the world I'm writing about is long, long gone. And it's only I'm writing it just for fun to entertain people from some of the characters.

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And there's a guy, a guy called Rollicking Betty. And the suggestion is he was a transvestite, I suppose, but but not alone. Was he tolerated? He was held in very high regard by everyone.

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You see, this is the time before there was any such thing as gay people or transvestites or whatever. And he really did exist. And it really was a little public that it was a sing-song pub where people used to put in the request to get up and sing. And he ran it and he used to wear it in the quiet afternoons, a little gold ring on it and a scrappy little top and a bit of makeup. And, you know, it was a very, very strange thing in those days.

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But the local people accepted that. And he was a he was a very, very good kind man. And he was very much loved in the area. Mm hmm.

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Mm hmm. Now there's a story, a chapter three. Why do Bees Dance, which is a lovely story. And it's about a character that I suspect did exist and who had a very, very hard life.

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Oh, yeah. That's about an old friend of my father's, a man called Hybels Smith. He was born in Monto and he was born, I think, as it says in the book, into the the savage poverty of the authorities. And he used to stand looking for work outside the gates. And because he wasn't a potent Dukkha, he was way down the list. So sometimes we would employ them to take cargo onto the hook before those containers.

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And he became a friend of mine. And the story is about him and what happened to him. But he had a life that is so harsh now that people couldn't understand the way he lived. If he had money, he stayed at the lodgings, and if he hadn't, he slept outside for years and years and years. And of course, it killed him, you know. The harshness of the life comes across in the book, but it's it's told with great affection.

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Harry, I mean, you grew up in that milieu and you knew them all.

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I mean, how did they regard you as a young fella?

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I mean, you were well got, as it were, but also you were very well educated and all the rest of it.

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You were kind of a cut above, you know. You know. Well, I heard all that when I was working down the docks. I never told anybody that I was at school or anything like that. And really, my passage was marked because my father was a very much like man on the docks. And being his son gave me an entrance into everything. And it's a world that I remember with great affection. It was a harsh, tough world.

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It was a totally unfair it was class ridden. These were people at the very, very bottom of the social class. Well, it was funny. And I'm hoping some of the stories are funny. Do you think some of them are funny?

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Are they are they I mean, they're very amusing. This the second story in the book is about a fellow who walks on water, literally. Yeah. They didn't exist.

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It was there was a man he did walk across the ocean and he did buy that boat. And I was his crew. It did sink in the canal. All of that happened. And it's hard to believe now that the canals were completely neglected. And where I live now down on the Grand Canal basin was full of sunken boats and nettles and weeds and everything up until 25 years ago. And I'm talking to you now from beside it. I'm surrounded by huge office blocks which are empty.

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And it reminds me when when I bought property down here to come and live nearly 30 years ago, if you stood on Pier Street looking to the east, the next person was in Holyhead because there was not a living soul down here. And now we're going back to that again. Isn't that an extraordinary thing? All of these huge towers to Facebook's, the Googles, all the banks, everything are empty and people are working from home. And here's you and I speak making a radio show.

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I'm at home. You're at home. And it's going to call into question when all this is over, how cities work, what they're made for. You know, if we can make this program, you'd have to wonder what's going on with your old friends and Montreaux with a huge complex and hundreds of people. And all of these businesses are going to be pulled apart and there will be massive, massive change when this is all over. All right.

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Well, Harry, we will leave it there.

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Thank you very much for joining us. Harry Krosby, entrepreneur turned author. The book is called Undertows Farm. It's available from kaffiyeh in the neighbourhood, but also from Lilliput Press. And Harry, thank you very much for joining us.

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You also for Christmas. I love Rob Iure first time cooking the dinner, but at least it's for a smaller crowd on the same day mentioned getting a crown.

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But I don't know if that's a hint for a present or something to do with the turkey.

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Sounds like you need more help than I can give you, should you ask for. But it has lots of recipes and cooking advice. It's on Facebook, Alexa and Google assistant. You're a lifesaver now.

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I better get my prince and princess home. See you soon. See if a chocolate is the real life saver. Happy Christmas.