Now Tommy knew nothing about the rock n roll. None of us did. I mean, we all went to see Bill Haley when he played Belfast. That was just an excuse to rip out the seats. But that night I looked at Mack, who had his arm around Tommy by this point, the pair of them completely blocked and talking into each other’s faces, and I thought to myself, the times they are a-fucking changin’ alright.

*

Did you ever try the toffee treacle pudding with nothing but cold custard on the top? What?! You’ve never lived, son. Just a carton of cold custard poured right over the top? The custard has to be cold, otherwise forget it. Some munch.

That’s what I miss most in the jail. But there’s other things, wee things you get in here that bring back memories, like for instance hot chocolate, you get the hot chocolate in here this weather, and that takes me back to when I was a wee boy in the Ardoyne, that and the carbolic soap, the smell of that carbolic soap takes me right back every time, back to the old house, where we’d all be sleeping in the one bed beneath all these jackets, my da’s big coats all spread out on top of us (we never saw a duvet in our lives, are you fucking kidding me) and they all smelt of the carbolic soap, that’s what my ma would wash our clothes in, only in the jail they have proper sheets and blankets and stuff like that and they wash them in a washing machine with Persil so as you have to wait till you get into the showers before you can get a good sniff, a good sniff of memory. It’s a fucking step up, in some ways.

*

Tommy’s da was on death’s door for about the space of what seemed like forever. They says that back in the day he had been involved in the Easter Uprising, that he had done time for the cause, but I never knew anybody who could confirm it and besides, what fucking age must the cunt have been? Tommy wore a gold George V sovereign ring on his finger that he said his da had made in the jail but who knows what goes on, they’ll tell you anything. When you would go round to Tommy’s in Jamaica Street everybody would sit in the kitchen and you would hear his da moaning from behind this curtain they had set up round his bed in the corner. I always thought he just seemed sorry for himself. It was all a big fucking drama. Occasionally this fucking disembodied hand would come out from behind the curtain and grab a cup of fucking tea or a lit fag and then it would go back to moaning to itself. It was fucking disconcerting. You’re sitting there trying to eat a biscuit and this guy is wailing like a fucking leper. Everybody would sit and talk to him through this thick fucking curtain. First time I saw it I says to myself, what is this, the fucking Wizard of Oz?