by Bill Steele

Created on: August 28, 2008

I must have been around 15 years old. It was when school was just finished, and I was walking down the street towards the bus station to get the bus home.

Earlier that day we had all gathered on the lawn at the front of the school, opposite the convention centre, to watch it burn. We missed maths. We hadn't been allowed out of the school grounds too much was going on.

At the back of the school was a blank brick wall, behind which were some terraced houses. Someone had been firing shots from the roof down into the street. There must have been some soldiers there.

I came out of the school and crossed the road. No traffic. It didn't strike me as unusual, even though it was the centre of the city. I suppose I was absorbed in my own world, and like many fifteen year olds, not very observant.

However, the outside world impinged. A bang was followed by sirens. Not particularly unusual I had been hearing them all day. The next bang was followed by glass flying down the street. A building was on fire next to the City Hall. More sirens. I ploughed on; a bit quicker now. Perhaps I should go straight home rather than divert to the library, which had been the plan.

Just as well. The road to the library was blocked the big gates across the road, where drivers were stopped for questioning and searching, were locked and guarded by armed paratroopers. The big department store next to the library was on fire. I watched for a while as the decorative plastic on the front of the building gradually melted and dripped onto the road below. Ambulances came and went.

Carry on. As I passed the next street, another bang, and a warehouse disintegrated. I think it was paper or cardboard inside, because it caught quickly.

Outside the courthouse the police guards seemed tense, guns drawn. Some children from the residential area ran past, heading home, shouting insults at me because I went to the wrong kind of school.

I couldn't get into the bus station. Ambulance crews were scraping someone off the road, next to a bus which had been parked across the road and set on fire. My bus home was going to be delayed, but at least I could wait under the bit of the roof which was still there.

Finally I got the bus. We went home a different way that day, because our normal route was blocked.

Where was I? Some turbulent political hotspot in the middle or far east?

No, the United Kingdom. Belfast, circa 1975.

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