I don’t know Barney…I’ll probably never see him again…but he was the cause of me making my first ever 999 call last night…
I was driving through Belfast after meeting Kate when I saw this man lying on the pavement at the side of the road. He wasn’t unconsious or anything but he couldn’t move his legs at all. His name was Barney.
I felt pretty sorry for Barney…he just looked so helpless stretched out on a cold Belfast pavement waiting to be rescued. All he’d done was to fall and he just wanted to get up and get on with his life – he didn’t even want his daughter in a nearby flat to know ‘because she’d just worry’. Typically Northern Irish.
But now a crowd was gathering…taximen, residents of a nearby block of flats and friends of Barney’s (although still no ambulance). And it gave me a strange pride in this little part of the world that we come from – just to see people in a little pocket of Belfast show genuine concern for their neighbour Barney.
