In the nice clear light of a Dublin morning.

Glasnevin is where all the heroes are buried, Michael fucking Collins and all. It’s a lovely place really.

And I get to the Angels’ Acre without a soul seeing me, and I hunted about for where we’d put Billy in, and it was very hard to tell where he was, it was that long since I visited, no sign of the wooden cross, but I thought maybe I knew where he was, and I dug a hole in the ground with a bit of an ould iron cross I found on a grave, and I put the stone in.

It was very heavy but it looked lovely.

And then this cunt of a guard arrests me.

I was seen pulling the cross off of an ould grave and someone called the pigs.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he says.

‘I’m not doing nothing,’ I says.

‘You’re after defacing a memorial,’ he says. I think that’s what he said, but he had this thick culchie accent. ‘And where did you get that buggy?’

‘That what?’ I said.

‘The buggy.’

‘Oh, the wheelier.’ Sure, you’d need a translator for them culchie polis. ‘I don’t know, guard,’ I says. ‘But it was in me ma’s, all legal like.’

‘I’m taking you in,’ he says, ‘for vandalism. Have you ever been in trouble before?’

‘Have I what?’ says I. Does a bear shit in the woods? ‘Listen,’ I says, ‘me wife is meeting me here in a minute, and I haven’t even seen her for years, can you just turn a blind eye?’

And I told him the whole story. Just like I done to you, only leaving out bits, you know. I just gave him the gist.

His big culchie face listening.

He looked gobsmacked, his walkie-talkie crackling like a sort a’ bird in his hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ says he, ‘but I have to arrest you.’

‘Can you not wait ten minutes behind a tree?’ I says.

It was just a few minutes from nine o’clock. It was July and it was getting hot and the ould sparrows were flitting about. Chirping. I was sure Janet would come and I could show her what I done.

And then I thought, fuck it, how can I show her the stone and a fucking policeman waiting in the bushes for me? What are you thinking, Joe? She’d never fucking forgive me. Near Billy and all.

‘Ah fuck it, guard,’ I said. ‘Sure you might as well take me in.’

That was the best decision I ever made in me life.

‘Are you sure?’ he says. ‘Because I could wait if you wanted.’

Well, he didn’t say that, of course. But, you know, he might have.

So off I go with my new friend, him with the ould wheelier under his arm.