2009

It was New Years Eve and Dave told us to meet him at the 29A busstop at 9pm outside the Donaghmede shopping centre. I was going to a party in Peters house with some of the lads, and not knowing where he lived, Dave offered to meet us at the busstop and bring us there, as he was going to the party himself. Paul and I got a lift from Rob's Mam out to where we would be meeting Dave. We had the laugh in the car like we usually do when we're getting a lift to rehearsals. Looking at Rob's bushy hair is enough to make me laugh for hours. We got out of the car across the road from the busstop and I was eager to get to Peters as I didn't feel to comfortable carrying drink around in my bag. We crossed over to the busstop only to see that Dave wasn't there. It was about 9:02pm and there was a few people wating for their bus, one group of people happened to be waiting for Dave too. We didn't know this until afterwards though. As we waited for Dave, me and Paul joked about what he'd be wearing. I was hoping he'd be wearing his oversized shirt he got from Guineys over a jacket, like he sometimes does. You could see him coming from a mile away. He joined our group of now four and called the other group over. It was awkward at first as we were all strangers to each other. Dave put his phone to his ear to see where the fuck everyone else was and  at that exact moment, these two rough traveller looking/sounding lads crossed the road and came over to us. They must have been between 19 and 23 and had already had their fair share of drink. One of them had short dark crew-cut type hair and was wearing a black duffle jacket, accompanied by a small bottle of orange Bicardi Breezer. I can't really remember what the other lad looked like because I was more focused on the other.

''Any drink, lads?''

''No, Straight Edge'' Dave said. You could tell straight away that Dave just wanted to get on with what he was doing and get the fuck out of there. The two strange lads started to get aggro and thought Dave was being smart with his Straight Edge remark. The rest of us kind of said nothing with the feeling of uncomfortness and awkwardness. Dave took a set of Nung Chucks out from his bag as he brings them everywhere in case he get's into any trouble. The lads soon became very anxious to see what it was that Dave have taken from his bag. 

''What's that?! What's that?!"

''Nothing, nothing''.

''YOU WON'T BE SAYING THAT WHEN I HAVE A KNIFE IN ME POCKET!''

For a split second I laughed in my head as to what he said to Dave, but as soon as I heard the word knife come from your man's mouth I began to back away from the group, the rest of them followed my example of backing off a bit. Dave had his way though, and was fucking circling the two lad's doing little combo's with the Nung Chucks here and there. The two lads were getting really aggro now so I didn't want to stick around. Paul and Rob came around to my direction as I was still slowly walking towards the carpark of the shopping centre. Inside I felt really bad walking away from the group and leaving Dave and the rest of the lads to fend for themselves, but I was only backing off slightly, keeping quite, and hoping they'd just fuck off somewhere. They continued to get even more aggressive towards Dave and everytime  we went back in Dave's direction the lad who was doing all the threatening told us to ''fuck off''! So we continued through the carpark. It was me, Paul, Rob, Gareth and Gilly. I knew who Gareth was, but not Gilly. Although he seemed like a nice and funny lad. The rest of the group paired off with Dave and continued down the road with the travellers following them. When we reached the other side of the carpark we went in the direction of Dave's house, when Paul got a phone call from Dave himself, telling us to go to his house and get a lift to Peters from his Dad. We did just that and met back up with Dave and the rest of the lads and talked over the whole thing. Looking back at it, it's a funny story. In the sense that there was about 8 of us there and only two of them. You don't think about that at the time. 

The party was great. There was some faces I knew there and some I didn't. Those that I didn't know I got talking to. Half way through the night there was a fire in a house about 10 doors down. I think it was after Midnight at this stage and there was Fireengines and Ambulances everywhere. I went outside one or twice but just went back into the house after a few minutes. It turns out a 50 year old man died in the fire, he was a father. I'm not sure what Dave's relationship was with the family but he knew them anyway. The fire was started by someone smoking upstaires. They fell asleep.. fire was the result.

It was a goodnight in Peters, apart from all the drama.