Knowing full well that whenever her husband played cards, he rolled up home pissed, Alice batted her eyes in pretend annoyance. She wasn’t really angry, though. As the old saying goes, boys will be boys.

Harry O’Hara ducked behind a tree as he saw the farmer’s Land Rover heading towards him and urged his pal Sonny to do the same. ‘Right, let’s do this quick while the coast is clear,’ Harry said, with a mischievous glint in his eye.

At eleven years old, Harry was virtually unrecognisable as the timid little boy he’d once been. His once almost white hair had now darkened and was more of a messy strawberry blonde. He had a front tooth missing, which had recently been knocked out in a fight with some older boys and, worse still, he’d picked up every bad trait he had ever heard his father talk about.

‘’Ere cacker, you chase the kanny towards me and I’ll catch it,’ Harry ordered Sonny. Kanny was the Romany word for chicken.

The bird clucked and darted about for a good five minutes before Sonny and Harry managed to corner it.

‘Gertcha, ya shitcunt,’ Harry shrieked, grabbing the chicken by its scrawny neck.

Knowing it was about to die, the bird let out one more tired cluck. Seconds later it went to chicken heaven.

Jimmy O’Hara was with Mickey Maloney and four other travelling lads in a pub called the Babbity Bowster in Glasgow town centre. Rumour had it the boozer was named after a Scottish country dance, but Jimmy didn’t know if there was any truth in the fable or not. Jimmy sorted through his cards and confidently smirked. There was over three-hundred quid in the kitty and if he didn’t win this game of nine-card brag, he’d eat his fucking hat.

‘Come to Daddy,’ he said, as he laid his four sevens onto the sticky table.

‘You’re a jammy cunt, O’Hara,’ Mickey Maloney said, laughing.

‘Same again?’ Jimmy asked, standing up.

‘One for the road and then we’d better get home to them women of ours,’ Mickey replied.