First published in Southword 47
Statistic
Belfast 1983. Walking to the train station you inhale the ghost tobacco of Gallaher’s, a pipish reek undercut by the fusty meat stink from Dalgety animal feed plant. Your workmates at The Irish News are horrified that you would walk alone on York Street; why don’t you take a bus?
In your first job out of secondary school, eighteen-year old you reckon if you want to smoke ten Silk Cuts a day, then you don’t have the price for the rail link service: simple economics.
Years later, when you read Martin Dillon’s book The Shankill Butchers (the perpetrators of an abduction, torture and sectarian murder spree in Belfast during the 70s-80s) you understand their fear about lone persons walking anywhere through the city. Why could you not smell the danger?
The job description for Editorial Assistant includes: and any other duties that may arise. One day the News Editor throws a tiny object onto your desk.
‘What’s this?’ you ask, picking up a half-inch ball of paper wrapped in clingfilm. ‘Prison letter needs to be typed up.’
You drop it while others gather to view the tiny package. You all speculate that it has been secreted out of prison on someone’s person and don’t want to think about where on the person. An old-timer journalist mutters about such squeamishness while he uses his thumb nail to cut open a text minutely penned on a square ripped from toilet paper, thin and crackly like the tracing paper used in primary school to copy pictures. Miniscule words about prison conditions. The journalist flattens the creases, then you the copy typist transcribes the letter using a manual typewriter. You check the newspaper every day, but it never makes the Letters Page.