This third volume of Patricia Craig's trilogy or memoir following her celebrated Asking for Trouble and A Twisted Root: Ancestral Entanglements in Ireland takes its title from Louis MacNeice: "My diehard countrymen like drayhorses/drag their ruin behind them". A memoir of her upbringing in Belfast and life in London, from the 1960s onwards but with scenes from childhood, adolescence, and later. The atmosphere of London is contrasted with that of Belfast.