Much of the time, it seems that God gives you lemons. But very occasionally, He serves up a cornucopia filled with pomegranates, lychees, sweet strawberries, succulent melon, papaya and mango. I don’t know why He chose to bless me in the summer of 1979, but bless me he undoubtedly did when he saw fit to contrive to place me in an olde worlde tea shop in the centre of the western Irish resort of Galway, some 500 miles from home.