tramps like us

“The girl from Ireland leaves after five minutes - she has to catch her bus, to catch her coach, to catch her ferry back home. She walks sore. It’s blatantly obvious that she shouldn’t have had to come to another country to get her life back on track. I wonder if the judges in Ireland have ever seen a woman as pale as this, counting out fifties onto the reception desk in a country where she doesn’t know a soul, and then bleeding all the way from Essex to Holyhead. I wonder if her father approves of the law because he doesn’t think it applies to her - and whether he would hate that law if he knew it did, and has brought her here.”