Free Myles Away From Dublin by Flann O’Brien

They distinguish the gentleman or at least the person who wants to be listed in that class. They carry, however, no guarantees at all. All accomplished crooks are well-dressed and there is a certain risk in being impeccable.
    Some people, usually of literary leanings, prefer dirty shoes and suits, unspeakable shirts, and hats thatintrude into the area of legend. Perhaps I am wrong but I doubt whether a portrait or paragraph of praise ever appeared in Vogue about the late James Joyce. (Now that I think of it, that magazine has never praised myself, perhaps a more serious offence against justice.) This bad temper on my part was induced by a piece which appeared recently in a Dublin paper, sent to it from London. Read it yourself:
    One of the features of London is the army, or so it seems to be, of boot-blacks who ply their trades outside and in such places as Leicester Square. For a shilling, these men will bring the dullest shoes to gleaming perfection. Today in the Hay market, a tall gentleman, complete with pinstripe suit, bowler hat and umbrella, strolled up to a boot-black to have his shoes cleaned. In a moment he was surrounded by a party of at least 100 German tourists, who, never having seen anything like it before, proceeded to take pictures from all angles. The boot-black was pleased, but the elegant gentleman seemed completely oblivious to the goings-on around him.
    I hope you do not think it funny. For my own part I feel that it is deeply scandalous; it is also incorrect, tendentious and liable to inflame the passions of people who like to look well in the street or those who just have to. Nobody is going to hand £1,000 to a shabby tramp. Yet who are those people who in London, accoutred with bowler hat and umbrella, dare leave their houses or hotels wearing clean shirts but filthy foot-wear? I think that is a fair question. If they are married men, it seems that their wives refuse to undertake an elementary household chore. If they are visitors in some hotel, it suggests that they have been too lazy or drunk to put their shoes outside the bedroom door on the preceding evening. Any way you look at it, they seem to be thoroughly worthless people.
    Cleaning and polishing a pair of male shoes is perhaps the simplest job man can undertake, yet he won’t do it, though he thinks nothing at all about unscrewing eight plugs from his car, cleaning them and adjusting the points. He is quite unconcerned about his own spawgs,though they are far more visible and conspicuous than plugs under a bonnet.
In Dublin
    I remember the day – it was surely 25 years ago – when about a dozen boot-blacks pursued their trade in College Green in Dublin and under the portico of the Bank of Ireland facing College Street. I was too young and too poor at the time to give them my custom and in any case I think I wore slippers just then. But I could not help noticing them and their uniformly villainous appearance. Men of that type, I concluded, could not possibly be engaged in cleaning other people’s shoes. Clearly they were spies – German, British, Irish; some looked bad enough to be serving all those three world powers simultaneously. According to the cutting I have quoted, they have moved to Leicester Square, London, and are now spying for the Russians.
    Versatility has always been an Irish virtue.
    Let me admit in conclusion that on this whole subject I may be deeply prejudiced. You see, I wear brown shoes and have, in practice, no use at all for boot-blacks . In any case, Sarah cleans my shoes every night. Sarah is my landlady. She knows her duties.

Consequences of having a cigarette
    I was standing in the shadow of a great cathedral wall in the days of my youth in company with another cub reporter. Why were we called cubs? My dictionary, in its very rare attempts at cracking jokes, follows up the word CUB with this, in brackets: ‘(Etymology unknown )’.
    But that doesn’t matter. More wide-awake than myself, the other cub nudged