Ultan,
Thanks for your intervention.
I have always been interested in the life led by the navvies, and your book did much to put flesh on the bones of the subject.
My father went off to work on the roads in the forties after being blacklisted from his old job because he had fought in Spain.
A neighbour and friend in London, the late Paddy Boyle, from Ardaragh in Donegal used to give wonderful accounts of his time as a navvy; it was he who gave me the explanation of the term 'hot-bed'.
He said that some of the landladies would rent out the bed rather than the room, and while one man was working his shift another would be sleeping in the bed - which never got cold.
Don't know if this is true or folklore.
Jim Carroll