Me and Pat go out for a few beers, meet some of the boys. Pat would fuck anything, no debate, and he’s with this chick Arlene, who is as rough as get out, and he’s arranged to meet her at The Diamond, so at about eleven o’clock we start making our way over there. I’m dying for a pish so as I nip down this lane and as I’m standing there taking a leak I hear these footsteps, the sound of people fucking charging toward me. Ah fuck, I says to myself, this could be anything. I whip round with my dick still hanging out and there’s three guys in black balaclavas headed straight for me. I’m going to get hit, I says to myself. I start panicking; ah fuck, this is it, I says. I can feel my dick crawling back into my scrotum just trying to get away. One of the guys runs right up to me and he says to me: put it away, Sammy, you flasher.

He obviously knows who I am, but the guy’s wearing a bally, so as I have no idea who he is, and I don’t want to ask. That’s the thing about ballys, you forget you’re wearing one, and you think that people still recognise you. Anyway, he says to me, how’s your ma? Ah, she’s grand, I says to him. That’s the game, he says. Look, he says to me, we’ve got to run. Just fucking set a house on fire, so we did. Catch up with you later, right? he says, and then he runs off with these two guys down the lane. I got a fucking fright, I’ll tell you that for nothing. And to this day I have no idea who he was. I says to Patrick, did you see those fucking guys in the black balaclavas going past? He saw nothing, would you believe it? I mean he was half-blocked, but still, it only proves that the IRA were like ghosts back then. They could move around Belfast without making a sound. They could float above the pavements and rise up, into the skies, on mass, when they had to. That’s how they got away with murder.

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