Above the urinals in the men's toilets in The Rutz, there's a faded black-and-white poster featuring an image of a masked paramilitary gunman alongside the stark warning 'Loose-talk costs lives'. Additional text cautions patrons of the bar not to go shooting their mouths off 'in taxis, on the phone, in clubs and bars, at football matches, at home with friends, anywhere!' In case that message isn't quite clear enough, there's one final, bold-type instruction: 'whatever you say - say nothing'.
Growing up in the North of Ireland in the 1970s and '80s, that phrase was Rule Number 1, repeatedly drilled into the consciousness of every man, woman and child. At the height of a complex, deep-rooted political, social, civil and religious conflict known by the painfully simplistic sobriquet 'The Troubles', sharing the most basic details of one's life - your name, your address, your school, your workplace, your pronunciation of the letter 'H' - with the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, could prove to be a fatal error of judgement, marking you out a 'legitimate target' for abuse, assault, or even assassination. Understandably, this could cast something of a pall over day-to-day life in a statelet whose name and very existence was a subject of endless heated. and potentially violent, debate.
