The black Citroen limousine pulled up at the traffic lights on the Rock Road, south of Dublin. The chauffeur looked straight ahead. The skeletal face in the rear glared at the black leather-clad motorcyclist on the single-cylinder Jawa. The tight mouth opened and barked a command at the chauffeur.
The lights changed.
The rear tyres of the Citroen screamed on the tarmacadam, but the car disappeared from the motorcyclist's view as the automatic clutch of the Jawa raced through the gears, leaving the Citroen's chauffeur to peer into the blue exhaust of the little two-stroke engine.
At the railway level crossing the Citroen caught up and the performance was repeated. Then the two vehicles paths diverged as the motorcyclist headed for the Evening Press office on Burgh Quay and the Citroen for the archepiscopal palace in Drumcondra.
Why the Archbishop of Dublin wanted to race a leatherclad young journalist on a motorbike remains a mystery.
Travellers' school
In Dr McQuaid's time there were no schools for Travellers - until two wealthy English hippies, Grattan Puxon and Venice Manley, arrived, liked what they saw of Ireland, and bought a cottage in a lane off Mount Street.
They read newspaper reports of confrontations at Cherry Orchard in Ballyfermot between Travellers and workers sent to evict them, protected by gardai. They went to see for themselves, and were appalled by the Travellers' living conditions.
Soon they established Ireland's first school for Travellers at the Cherry Orchard encampment, with the help of members of the newly-founded Voluntary Service International.
The unfunded school was built from the blocks of the Berlin Wall. The wall came from the Smithfield Market in Dublin city centre, where Richard Burton climbed it during the filming of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
A scrap merchant with an eye for publicity bought the wall, dismantled it, and appeared on The Late Late Show to offer it to any deserving charity. Grattan Puxon was the first person to get his hand up. So the great Cold War symbol helped to keep Traveller children warm.
Milk and buns were provided by Bewleys Cafes, still then owned by the Quaker family. All of a sudden the Catholic Church displayed an interest in the plight of Travellers.
A rival school was established on the site, complete with a Catholic chaplain and organised by the Legion of Mary. A priest forbade parents to send their children to the lay-run school.
Travellers were very religious, yet many of them refused to obey. They had more trust in the volunteers. But a war of attrition by the Church was ultimately successful, and the volunteers sought other projects.
Dr McQuaid's intelligence service was said to be all-pervasive. Yet it seems unlikely that when his Citroen stopped at the Rock Road traffic lights that day, he knew that the leather-clad motorcyclist was one of the volunteers.
Photographic journals
Expensive cars were not the sole indulgence of the otherwise ascetic archbishop. His hobby was photography. He kept up with the latest in camera technology and subscribed to several photographic journals. Ironically, as a result of his influence those magazines were banned in Ireland.
The choice of material available to scatologically minded adolescents was severely limited, especially as pagan Britain was also going through a puritan period. Almost as soon as the Irish ban on a magazine such as Men Only expired, it would be renewed again.
One midsummer day word went around that the latest issue had been suppressed. Four of us teenagers jumped on our bikes and raced into Dun Laoghaire to a compliant newsagent, and then down a back lane to enjoy ourselves.
It was a grimy little publication, with small photographs reproduced on cheap newsprint. The object of the ban was one small shot, about two inches wide, of a model lowering the top of her swimsuit.
Only the upper part of her cleavage was exposed, but by the standards of those times that was sensational. And the model's eyes looked straight into yours: she was doing it just for you.
That afternoon we gathered again on Killiney Strand, under the high walls of the archbishop's palace. We were waiting for one of the gang members.
His father was Dr McQuaid's chauffeur and he lived in the palace. He arrived with the latest batch of art photography magazines discarded by the archbishop.
Beautiful models
The pages were big and one picture filled each page. The paper was glossy and the printing was clear. The models were beautiful and almost completely naked.
It looked like pornography to us. Given its ultra-respectable source, it appeared to undermine the whole vast edifice of suppression and censorship. The ground seemed to shake under our feet.
But to us it was unthinkable that the archbishop could be excited by such material, as we were. He had to be different.
We passed the magazines around among us and compared them with the Men Only. We agreed we found the smudgy display of cleavage far more erotic and wondered why.
After lengthy and portentous debate the consensus was that what made the difference was the look in her eyes: she was telling us that she was posing specially for us.
We felt sorry for the enigmatic and lonely man in the palace behind us.