FB, posts. chapter 14 (short)

A few posts off my face book page.

I am 'The dogs bollocks'. I have proof. ....... You know 'You are what you eat'. Well my mother use to feed us with a Well known brand of sausages, can you see where I'm coming from,.......... I never eat them now, if I do I count it as one of my veggie days.

The dogs bollocks means 'Someone who thinks they are the real deal'

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The anniversary of JFK's death.

JFK had been shot, we stood around on a spare bit of land in Manchester. ........... Behind all the houses, it was called the Croft. ............... Some one said 'It will be another world war'. I shipped myself.......... Yes, a boy about 14, much older than us said........... 'Me Dad said we have a world war every 24 years, we're due one'......... 

I shipped myself again and started to think about making a bunker........... Sad. My Mom told me what to do if I saw a blinding flash, I said 'We see that in the park every week'........... ............

An explanation of some words here, 'blinding' in Manchester means 'Very good'Flashing can mean 'A man who exposes his self' 

 These stories may not travel well.


I'm working late tonight, Newcastle play at home. Which will guarantee I'll be busy. The Christmas shopping has started. It's going to be tough.

Chapter 14. Friday 16^th June1972.

The next morning Tommy O’Neil opened the door as soon as I knocked.   “Hi ya.”  I walked past him and through to the kitchen. Johnny was leaning against the sink, eating his breakfast.

“Do you want a cup of tea?”   The big old kettle was simmering on the stove.

“I’ll make it; you eat your bacon butty.”   I poured myself a tea.

Tommy came into the kitchen, “Johnny, you need to hand your notice in today, I’m sick of them asking when you’re coming in.”   He slammed the door on his way out. Johnny burst out laughing.

We made our way across the Albert Bridge and through town, Johnny leading me in such a way that we came in from the back of the Divis flats, he was being careful. We didn’t even have to knock on the door. It opened just as we got there and Jonas closed it behind us.

“Did you check if you were being followed?”   Jonas asked us, as we settled on the floor.

“Do you think we're stupid?” Johnny looked hurt.

“Well you can’t be too sure.”   Jonas went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on, he came back with two cups of tea, with the tea bags still in them, we didn’t complain.

“The way we work is this.”   Jonas glanced down at us, to see if we were listening.   “We’ll spend a lot of time finding a place to shoot from. We’ll make a good escape run, it’s best to go though houses, at least two streets, do you understand?”   We both nodded.   “I only have one shot, no more, and then we go.”   He made a hand movement showing it was a fast exit.   “I always go the different way, and you two will go hide the gun, wash your hands very carefully, and leave, do you understand?”   We both nodded again.

“We’ll collect the gun later and then we get paid.”   Jonas sat back on the bed and shrugged as if to invite questions.

“How do we carry the gun around, we can hardly walk the streets toting a sniper’s rifle?”   Jonas sat up.

“We carry the gun in two parts, I carry the….”   He had to think hard for the word.   “..telescopic sights.”   He jumped up and started to put his coat on.

“Come, we will go to see the gun.”   We took another slug of tea, I was glad to leave most of mine, and made our way out. Jonas left three minutes later and met up with us at the top of the street. We then followed him, about thirty yards behind, as he made his way through the streets. He stopped every now and then and watched, sometimes stopping at a bus stop, sometimes just looking in shop windows, but all the time watching. He headed back over the Albert Bridge and turned left down the Short Strand, past the depot where Johnny and I had worked.

“Do you fancy a quick game of pool?”   Johnny nudged me, as we passed the depot. Suddenly Jonas disappeared, he’d squeezed through a hole in a wooden fence, and we quickly followed. Behind was a big expanse of waste ground, with a brick building over near the river. This was some sort of warehouse, but had clearly not been used for sometime. We all climbed in through one of the smashed windows, Jonas stayed behind for about twenty minutes, looking out of the window. We sat on old boxes, waiting and had a cigarette.

“Better to check.”   Jonas was satisfied we hadn’t been followed. I had no idea where the best place to hide a rifle was, but in a warehouse, in the middle of waste ground, didn’t feel right.  At the far end of the building, were some internal offices. The offices windows were all smashed, but a couple of old desks and a filing cabinet, had been left by the last occupants.

“Bring that up here.”   Jonas was pointing to an old wooden ladder with rungs missing. We obediently lifted them upright and Jonas climbed up and stepping carefully, disappeared over the office roof. He reappeared holding the rifle bag. We went into the office and watched Jonas unpack the rifle, from what appeared to be a home made rifle bag. He unrolled the carrier, to reveal a stripped down two piece weapon. The wooden stock had been removed and round the barrel was one layer of string, wrapped where your hand would hold the weapon. The butt was removable and snapped together with a male and female locking device. The butt had been hollowed out at some point in its life, making the weapon very light. Jonas quickly fitted the gun together, then opened the cleaning kit which had some pull through material. He expertly tore off a piece of four by two which he threaded this through the draw string and holding up the gun to the light and looking through every few pulls, checking for some piece of dirt or some sign of pitting on the inside of the barrel. When he was satisfied, he went back to the bag and out of one of the folds, brought the telescopic sights.   “Good optic.”   He then started to show us the basics, like a training sergeant.

“You must be able to do everything in the dark. You have to be able to strip the gun down and put it back together with no light, it may cost you your life.”   Jonas began his lecture.  “This gun has been modified to take NATO bullets, seven six two millimetre, easy to get hold of,” he explained, “and they can penetrate any jacket, but I always go for the head.”   I gave a little shudder it brought it home to me what I was getting involved in.

“You have a go.”   Jonas handed the gun to Johnny, who held the gun to his shoulder and took aim at some point at the far end of the warehouse. He bent down and unlocked the butt from the rest of the weapon, placed the two parts together and in a jiffy the weapon was ready again. He handed it to me. I was surprised how light it was. The balance was not very good, but for a single shot attack, it was perfect.

“How do we get it around town?”   It was the same question I was going to ask, but Johnny beat me to it.

“It is always difficult, but the last team used golf bags and tool bags, with other tools inside, or they just hid the thing, under their coats, but never the same method twice, even in taxis.”   Jonas couldn’t tell us much more; the rest was up to us.

“The others were arrested, but not because they looked like they were carrying guns. You have to be careful not to raise anyone’s suspicions.”   Jonas started to put the gun away, carefully packing every thing into its proper place and tying the two ends of the bag.  Then climbed up onto the office roof and disappeared, as he hid the weapon at the back, out of sight.

“Come, we have a lot more work to do.”   We left the way we had come in, but before we went through the fence, he told us to follow him about fifty yards behind. We went through the fence, and back towards the city. All the time, he was checking to see if we were being followed. We walked through town, until Jonas found what he was looking for, he nodded towards us, and we caught him up. He had noticed a row of disused shops, the windows were smashed and the entire lower floor was boarded up, but it had a good field of fire; you could see all the way down the road, to the factories at the bottom. We went round the back of the buildings. There was a gate, with no lock and the bottom hinge had snapped, but the top hinge held it in place. Carefully, we looked around the back yard. The back door was unlocked and easily swung open to reveal what we wanted, stairs up to the floor above.

Jonas lead the way up the stairs, old bits of rubbish and bricks littered the way. On the first floor, off the small corridor, were four rooms and a bathroom. This had been trashed and pipe work taken. The toilet had been smashed, but the sink was still intact. The windows of the two front rooms were out, but most importantly, it had a very good view of the road, the junction to the main road being about one hundred and fifty yards away.

“This is good.”   Jonas liked what he saw and carefully removed a broken pane of glass from one window, which would be in his line of fire. Then he went into one of the other rooms, but didn’t find what he wanted.

“Go and bring me a piece of wood, about twelve feet long, I want to put it across there.  He pointed from the mantelpiece to the furthest window. “And you,”   he looked at me, “can clean the stairs, we need to be able to get out of here quickly, without tripping up.”

Johnny and I set about our tasks.

“Make sure the yard is clear as well, for a quick exit.”

Johnny left and I shifted an old bike frame and some broken bricks from the pathway between the gate and the door. Johnny came back with two lengths of wood, one was shorter and thicker the other was longer but flexible. Jonas set about fixing the long piece as he had planned, and used the shorter piece to support it. Soon he was happy. He kicked some rubbish to clear the place where he would be standing to take his shot. It was a small arc of fire that he was interested in, just at the end of the street, on the junction of the main road, just the sort of place the army would patrol regularly.

“Now we have to think of our retreat.”   We made our way downstairs and out of the yard and into the back lane of some terraced houses. These were small two up and two down dwellings. Some of them had numbers painted on their back walls. We walked down passing about five houses. We stopped at one, where Number forty three had been chalked on the wall. There were all sorts of bits of rubbish around in the alley. Johnny banged on the back door, no answer; he banged again, still no answer.

“I’ll go round the front.”   We returned along the back lane and went round to the front door. Johnny again knocked on the door and after a short while, it opened a little. A man poked his head out.

“Hi Jacky,” Johnny said as brightly as he could. When the man recognized Johnny, he opened the door all the way. He stood on the step and looked up and down the road, then he gave me and Jonas the once over.

“Hi Johnny, what’s happening?”   The man clearly knew this was not a social call.

“We need your doors open for two hours tomorrow, between four and six.”   It was half an order, half a request. The man now looked harder at me and Jonas.

“I don’t want trouble for my mother.”   He had his hands dug into his pockets, his body language was saying “no.”

“We’ll just be passing through.” Johnny insisted. “Jacky, we need this. See you tomorrow.”   Johnny turned on his heels and walked away, we followed.

Next, we went over the road and knocked on a blue door, it opened quickly and a fiery looking woman of about fifty, took one look at Johnny, glanced up and down the street and beckoned us inside. She disappeared into the house and we followed. From the front room, she led us down a passage to the kitchen. We all stood in the kitchen, the woman leaning on the sink, with her arms folded.

“What do you want?”   She was looking at Johnny.

“We may need to come through here tomorrow, between four and six so both doors need to be open, and with nothing in the way.”   Johnny could see that was not a problem.

“Also,” Johnny sucked on his teeth, “we need to leave a gun here for a day or so, do you have a hidey hole?”

“I’ve been a Republican all my life,” she said as she lit the stove and placed a big kettle on the top.   “My father and his father before him, were head to head with the Orange Men. I’ll give you any help I can. Do you want a cup of tea?”

We needed friends like this; we all started to relax.

Johnny now remembered introductions.   “That’s Jonas and Billy. She looked at us both.   “This is my aunty on my mother’s side, Kathleen Kerry.” Jonas and I nodded at her.

“Sit down the pair of you; you’re cluttering the place up.”   We did what we were told, squeezing in at the small table. A loaf of bread stood on the chopping board with the cut end down; a bottle of brown sauce stood next to the salt and pepper. The table cloth was covered in breadcrumbs. As the kettle came to the boil, Kathleen set out four cups and went through the ritual of tea making, heating the brown teapot before putting three heaped spoons of tea into it. She filled it with the boiling water and left it to brew. We sat and watched in silence, enjoying the quiet scene.

“We hide things in here.”   She had opened a small cupboard in the kitchen, and pulled back some old tarpaulin beneath there were a couple of loose floorboards. She pulled them up and we peered in. You could smell the damp rising from the hole. It was big enough to hide the gun.

“That’ll do fine,” said Johnny and smiled. We sat down and finished our tea. Johnny and Kathleen talked of family matters; Jonas and I just listened.

“Well we need to get on.”  Johnny gave Kathleen a kiss as we left, we smiled and thanked her for the tea. Once back on the streets we walked to the main road.

“Meet me at two o’clock on the back stairs of the shop, have the gun in place before then. I’ll bring the scope and the ammo.”  

Jonas walked off and as usual, kept checking that he was not being followed.

“Fancy a game?”   Johnny was feeling pleased with himself, but I wanted to report in, before I forgot all the details.

“Come on,” Johnny knocked my head, “let’s go to O’Donnell’s.”

“Yes, but we haven’t sorted out how we’re going to get the gun through town?”   I was getting jittery at the thought of going on tomorrow’s operation.

“We’ll get a taxi, you're paying.”    Johnny was walking at a brisk pace, obviously keen to get the first pint down his neck.

The bar was full for that time of the day. I start to take in all the faces, logging the ones I knew well, and then trying to pull the new ones off the mug shots. There was some very hairy company that day.

Johnny was chin wagging, as he waited for his turn on the pool table. I ordered the pints, and made sure I ordered a shandy for myself.

I used the mirror again, to hide the fact that I was studying faces in the crowd.

“We’re on.”   A jab in the kidneys from Johnny, told me he’d got the table set up. It was a game of doubles; not an easy game to play, but we won easily. I played safe and Johnny cleaned up after they set him up.

“Fancy playing for pints?”  Johnny was chalking his queue, as he asked the next couple up for a game. One of the men playing was on the files, I watched him carefully.

“Okay, but I’m drinking double gins.”   But Johnny has missed the signals.

“No bother.”   The winners break off, so Johnny gave them a good whack, the balls landed badly, wide open.  

“Go on Ivan,” someone called out.   Oh shit, I had thought I knew his face, but now remembered his name, Ivan the Terrible. He was thought to have tortured many poor Orange Men, drive-by shooting was his specialty. Yes, the army would love to know where this man was. I could feel myself tense up; I wondered if I should throw the game? Then I decided, what the hell, I’ll pay for the drinks. Ivan had an easy four balls but then the fifth was a hard shot and he missed.

It was my turn and none of my shots were easy, so I played safe, much to Johnny’s disgust. Ivan’s partner potted two balls from an impossible position, and we were staring defeat in the face.

We slowly but surely worked our way back into the game, Ivan getting more frustrated with every shot. I was tempted to play a loose ball, but something inside me wanted to win. Johnny punched home the last ball.

“Yes.”  He thrust his queue into the air, I smiled and shook Johnny’s hand.

“Two pints of the finest, he’s paying,”Johnny shouted with a nod towards Ivan, who had already sat down.

“Fuck off, we were playing pool not snooker,” Ivan said, with a hardening look on his face. Johnny’s quick temper immediately showed itself.

“Get the fucking beers in.” Johnny was pointing to the bar. I looked around for any possible allies, but there was no one in the bar who fancied this one. Once again, Johnny could not control himself. He leaned over the table and slapped Ivan in the face. In a flash, chairs were being pushed back. Like a shot, the manager was around from the bar, but not before Ivan had head butted Johnny. I had done a half dropkick on Ivan from behind, not very successfully because he quickly turned round and gave me a one, then two to the face. I was on the floor holding my head. Johnny was being held down and about five men were holding Ivan back. We were on the street in no time.

“You’re barred for a week.”   No manager wants to lose a paying customer for too long, but he had to show he was in charge, so we were out.

We re-played the action all the way back to Johnny’s house, I claimed I’d done a full dropkick and that’s how he caught me, but Johnny claimed he had given a full punch to Ivan’s face; it was just a slap really.

Much later my face was still stinging, as I picked up the phone.

Simon answered and I gave him my report.