Short Back and Sides (18 page)

31 August 2010

Customer:
The sentences the judges are passing down for serious crimes are ridiculous. The law is no deterrent any more!

Barber:
They're all living in cuckoo land, far removed from the real world. So are a lot of the politicians. Look at Pádraig Flynn's argument on ‘The Late Late Show', for example, telling the nation that he was stretched by the cost of running his three houses, the maids and the cars. It would all be so funny if it wasn't so serious.

Hume Avenue

Park West

Dublin 12

Ireland

with associated companies throughout the world

www.gillmacmillan.ie

© Peter Quinn 2011

First published by Gill & Macmillan 2011

This ebook edition published by Gill & Macmillan 2011 Illustrations by Eoin Coveney

9780717151905 (epub)

9780717152490 (mobi)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the publishers.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Peter Quinn is a Dublin barber with a keen ear for a good story. This quirky collection of exchanges with his customers range from funny to eye opening, covering everything from the weather and the economy to the fall of the church and the spiralling cost of NAMA. Yet each tale is as individual as the customer and his hairstyle.

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Gill & Macmillan publishes a wide range of Irish-interest non-fiction, from history to economics, politics to cookery and biography to children's. Since 1968 we have published outstanding authors and groundbreaking books such as David McWilliams'
The Pope's Children
, Noel Browne's
Against the Tide
, Garret FitzGerald's
All in a Life
, Augustine Martin's
Soundings
and three generations of Ballymaloe's Allen family on our cookery list.

Our story begins in 1856 when Michael Henry Gill, then printer for Dublin University, purchased the publishing and bookselling business of James McGlashan, forming McGlashan & Gill. In 1875 the name was changed to M.H. Gill & Son. In 1968 Gill & Macmillan was established as a result of an association with Macmillan of London, which had been founded in 1843. Gills had a shop on Dublin's O'Connell St that sold books for 123 years until 1979. Today our bookshop can be found at
www.gillmacmillan.ie.

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