Off Me Block!

The author meets up with Tommy in his new villa in Cyprus to see how he is settling into his new life as a millionaire.  While loving not having to ever work again, Tommy cannot shake off the frugality of his younger days when he and his brothers would help their mother put food on the table in any way they could.  Tommy tells the hilarious tale of he and his friend's foray into 'Boxing the Fox'.

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Tommy and the author part company with a promise to meet up once again for a 'natter'.

The offer of a very generous redundancy package proves too tempting to resist for Tommy, but his marital ties to Dymphna sour the opportunity.   Another bomb shell from his estranged father rocks Tommy's world and changes his life forever.  In the concluding chapter of Book One, Steaks and Stout, it would appear that everything has turned up rosy for our Tommy as he saunters off into a new life.

The years continue to whistle by for Tommy, and after the Trojan effort he put in back in 1996, he is now firmly back on his feet and very much a part of his kid's lives.  Saphina and Gareth for their parts have grown to adulthood and as Tommy comes to grips with a new relationship, his kids have each both  found the first stirrings of a love of their own.  These affairs of course, will no doubt spell mayhem for Tommy.

Tommy struggles to get back on his feet after climbing out of a bottle.   Relying on the kindness of family to help him,  he fights hard to resist the urge to murder his sister's insufferable kids, as they make life on a couch unbearable for him.  A long vanished ghost from his childhood rocks up out of the blue and drops a bombshell which will change Tommy's life forever.

The years are flying past for Tommy.  We pick up with him in 1990 as the family prepares for Saphina's First Holy Communion.  Having long since succumbed to his new reality, Tommy is enjoying the butchering life and looking forward to a family holiday on the Algarve.  Italia '90, however, beckons and Tommy cannot resist the urge to be in the thick of it at Ireland's first World Cup Finals.  Having splurged the family's holiday money on a trip to Palermo, Tommy breaks the news to Dymphna on Saphina's Communion day and discovers the true cost of his Italian dream.

Tommy and Dymphna head off on their honeymoon, at loggerheads over the melee at their wedding reception.  Tommy settles in to a life behind a butcher's counter.  After a search of several months, the couple finally find place they can call their own in a brand new council estate in Ballybrack.  As Tommy adjusts to his new domestic situation, an early arrival brings both [panic and delight.

After recovering from a bout of pneumonia, Tommy is intent on getting back to his gigs in a Killiney hotel so that he can begin to woo Dymphna.  Good news comes to him from across the water, record labels are interested in him, but his new found romance with Dymphna makes him think twice.  A first meeting with his future in-laws goes awry thanks to vomit and dog shit and a glorious holiday in Santa Ponsa comes to a depressing end when a medicinal mishap is identified. 

Tommy brings us on a whistle-stop tour of his years in secondary school, where he discovers his singing voice and falls in love for the first time.  Convinced that he is going to be a global superstar he forgoes sitting his Leaving Cert and signs up with a local promoter who puts him to work in a posh Killiney Hotel.  There he meets his new love and soon to be wife, Dymphna, who steals his heart and his virginity in the back of a Fiat Ritmo.