The sparkling story of a young boy born in 1944, who grew up on the banks of the Grand Canal in Dublin’s Portobello Road. Desmond, an awkward boy, romps through his childhood like a bockety bicycle that won’t quite go where it is steered. His playground is the Grand Canal, where in the company of his equally bockety (lopsided, rickety, unstable) friends, he goes crashing through the reeds in search of adventure. A glorious tale of a time when few cars existed and boys hid behind doors and listened and tried to make sense of it all while the mams talked and smoked.