ABSTRACT
New Year’s Eve was always special, ever since David was a boy, ever since his father was alive. His father, dark like Clark Gable his mother said, knocking on the neighbours’ doors in that little grey street on the stroke of midnight, carrying a wee bit of coal, with his wee son beside him. A drink in every house for the first footer; people who had nothing in those little damp, mill houses of North Belfast, sharing what little they had.
