This account of growing up in inner-city Dublin during the 1930s is a combination of personal memoir and social document. It gives descriptions of pawnbrokers and money-lenders, of how a family could manage life in one room, and of the workings of inner-city communities. Through the author's eyes, we see what people ate, what they wore (how collars were turned, dresses recycled, and children's shoes repainted), what medicines they took, what games they played, and how institutions such as schools, hospitals and hospices were perceived. Against this background, readers are invited to take part in the author's childhood experiences: pre-school plots to murder the neighbour's toddler; youthful attempts to figure out where babies come from, thwarted by the nuns; excursions with her mother to foil her father's "carryings-on"; and starting work in a sewing factory aged 14 to support the family when her father was dying of tuberculosis.