But I was getting too deep for me own liking, muttered, 'Bit late for you to be getting a social/political conscience.'

There's a lesbian bar on the corner and I would have loved me bigoted mother to know that. She'd have put a match to it and then got a Mass said.

I had quickened my pace, was on Quay Street, the Temple Bar of Galway, smaller but no less riotous, bastion of English hen parties and general mayhem, imported or otherwise. I turned at the flash hotel called Brennan's Yard, where the literati drank.

I had dreaded returning to my apartment. There's a Vince Gill song, 'I Never Knew Lonely'. You live on your own, see a loved one go down, there's few depressions like entering an empty apartment, the silent echoes mocking you. I wanted to roar, 'Honey, I'm home.'

I walked slowly up the stairs of my building, dread in my gut, the keys in my hand. There was a key ring attached, given to me by Cody, it had a Sherlock Holmes figurine. I took a deep breath, turned the key. I'd been to the off-licence, got my back-up.

Bottle of Jameson in my hand, I walked in, found a glass, poured a healthy measure, toasted, 'Welcome home, shithead.'

No matter what the cost – and I've paid as dear a price as there is – those first moments when the booze lights your world, there is nothing . . . nothing to touch that. Put the cap on the bottle. I was back to the goddamn longing, to trying to keep within a certain level of balance. Shite, I'd been down this road a thousand times, never worked, always ended in disaster. The silence in the room was deafening.

I'd been doing this demented stuff a while now, buying booze, pouring it and then pouring it down the toilet, each time muttering like a befuddled mantra, 'Down the toilet, like my life.'

Before the shooting – What a line that is, a real conversation spinner, beats Where I took my vacation hands down – I'd been trying to implement changes, had decided to change the things I could.