“I didn’t know where I was. I was afraid to go out. I walked round the town of Sligo for four days then I went back to the room they’d got for me. I took an old armchair and placed it against the wall so that I could get the same angle on the sky that I was used to in prison. These guys would come round and they’d try to get me to go out to discos. I thought they were joking.

“I just wanted to stay in the room.

“Then one day I took the Belfast Express from Sligo. I told no one I was leaving, and when I came back no one knew I’d been away. I stepped out into Great Victoria Street from the bus station and for a minute I couldn’t get my bearings. So I went straight to St Peters. I used to be an altar boy there.”

“Why?”

“This happens. There’s nothing you can do about it. You know it’s stupid but you do it. It’s a sort of a homesickness. For normality. I went to see my mother who had suffered a stroke. Then finally I saw my wife. I met my son. It must have been three years. And in the street where I used to live there was a carnival on. I couldn’t believe it. There were five thousand people dancing to a reggae band off the Falls. It was unreal. I had dreamed of returning home there so often I couldn’t believe what I saw.

“I contacted no one in the organization. They’d not have been very helpful. I was acting the idiot.

“I was two days in West Belfast and the whole time there was a carnival on. One minute there’d be this silence you can get in a city, the next the music would start up. I found it hard to relate to that – people dancing in the Falls till two or three in the morning.

“Then I went South again. I went back to my room. The guys called but I couldn’t stand their company. All they were looking for was diversion. Up to their eyes in diversion. I was driven demented. I couldn’t even bear the box after a while. I had it up to here with the sexual problems of the plain people of Ireland. After a while I began to believe that Gay Byrne was getting a bit like Mr Magoo. One day I went to Dublin. I wanted to straighten things out. I’d arranged to meet someone in Parnell Street. And I imagined I saw a Brit on the street. I stepped into a shop and asked for a packet of fags though I don’t smoke.”

“How did that happen?”

“Whatever patterns the pedestrians were making on the pavement made me think the Brits were there.