Nic Nac Paddy Whack

‘IRA, IRA. Fuck the Queen and the UDA...’

He danced out of the roaming orange and purple spotlights with one arm held high, proudly brandishing a Miller bottle crushed into a sweaty palm.

‘Alex Smith, Alex Smith, Alex Smith is in the IRA!’

He leered lopsidedly at me awaiting some response, some code unknown to me. After taking two steps toward a bear hug he clocked the girl on my arm and stopped dead.

‘Oh right, have a good night, mate.’

Conor MacNamara was off again. Back to his patriotism and shouting for a green light amongst the orange.

‘What was all that about?’

I turned to Sinead only to see the same realisation on her face as was hanging off his.

‘I, uh, when my mum wasn’t well...’

She turned to me, held both my hands in hers as she did when this came up.

‘...I did a lot of things I regret.’

Growing up the son of an English soldier and an Irish Catholic mother was never dull. There always seemed to be some secret language most of my classmates were speaking no matter how proficient I became at the redundant consonants of Gaelic.

‘With a nic nac Paddy whack,

Give a taig a gun...’

He sang in the distance. A shadow behind us now. I turned back to my steady drinking. Nothing to say.

I turned to her friend Phoebe and gave her the eyes. She smiled back so I started in chatting about some crap band I knew she was getting all sweaty over. I waited until she was looking in my eyes before I checked out her tits.

That was the way in those days. There is no present in the north; no future, just the past happening over and over again. Now.

‘...send those British bastards home.’