Green Glowing Skull

Rickard is proudly middle-aged but deeply disillusioned. He cannot face the prospect of caring for his ageing parents, and wants an excuse to leave his soul-destroying job at Verbiage, a company specialising in 'the mining and re-purposing of online text'. So following a path well-trodden by his ancestors, Rickard leaves Dublin and sets off for New York.

Knowing no one and with a hankering to become a singer, he turns to the Cha Bum Kun Club, an organization with no rituals - besides an intricate system of tie knotting - and no ethos beyond offering men down on their luck a place to meet. There he meets Denny and Clive, two elderly Irish expats, who invite him to sing with them, opening up a world unknown and unimagined.