Not my words, the words of no less a judge than Mr Brent Pope Esquire, who a couple of the chaps . . . namely Hennessy and Eduard . . .

met at a recent pro-am in Milltown."

He shouts that from one end of the visiting room to the other, roysh, and of course every head in the place shoots up, but it's weird, roysh, because the atmosphere is different today . . . as in lighter, if that makes any sense?

I'm sure I hear one or two people go, "Howiya, Ross, " on the walk to the table.

"Seems to me that someone can't stay away, " he goes. "I wasn't expecting you for another week, Kicker, " and I'm like, "Yeah, big focking deal. Don't keep banging on about it, " and he goes, "Sorry, Man, I'm just bumping my gums here."

I whip out the little black box that I took from his study and I, like, push it across the table to him. "No!" he goes. "You didn't!"

and he opens the box and stares into it for, like, 20 seconds and I swear to God, roysh, it looks like he's going to cry.

"I never thought I'd see this little fellow again, " he goes and then he turns to this total Anto at the next table and he's there, "It's my Mont Blanc pen, " and the goy nods back at him, presumably while calculating how much something like that would fetch on the black morket.

I go, "I thought you could use it to stort writing letters to, I don't know, various people and shit? As in, try to prove your innocence?"

and he goes, "My innocence?" and then he sort of, like, laughs.

He's like, "Very good. No, I shall use this to do the Irish Times crossword and perhaps write a letter to your friend and mine . . .

Madam. I've been finding the solutions a bit too easy of late . . . I'm not jiving you, Brother. Maybe it's because I've more time on my hands. Or it could be they're dumbing down? Bring in more readers. Pay for these new offices."

"What's that, Charlie?" this voice behind me goes. I look around and it's Lex, the old man's cellmate, an absolute gorilla, who I've noticed has this habit of, like, checking out your shoulders when he meets you. Apparently, his speciality is tearing people's orms out of their sockets.

"It's my good pen, " the old man goes. "Kicker's brought it in for me, " and Lex looks at me and goes, "Good man, Ross. You look after you oul fella, you hear me?" and then he turns around to, I presume, his wife, and I hear him go, "That's him . . . that's the fella, " in sort of, like, awe, if that's the word?

And as I'm sitting there in the visiting room, watching various Ken Ackers come and go, saying hello . . . well, it's more, "Howyia, Charlie" . . . I'm thinking about something One F said when I met him coming out of Lansdowne after the Australia match.

I was telling him the old man was shouting his Von Trapp off, acting like he was in the members' bor in Portmornock and was going to end up getting himself decked.

One F shook his head and went, "See, what you don't realise about your old man is that people actually like him. He topped the poll in Dun Laoghaire in the local elections. He's a leader, Ross."

All of a sudden, roysh, Lex's bird is standing over our table and she's going, "Charlie, I just wanted to say thank you, " and the old man's there, "Oh, stop that. Anyone would have done the same, " and she's like, "No . . . he'd be dead today if it wasn't for you."

When she's focked off, roysh, I'm looking at him for an explanation.

"It was the strangest thing, " he goes. "As you know, Lex has something of a past, quoteunquote. Armed robbery, aggravated violence and whatever.

See, I'm one of the lucky ones . . . I'm here for coffee and a day. Lex will be in his fifties by the time he's bag and baggage. A stretch like that would make a spider monkey of even the strongestf" I'm like, "What the fock is a spider monkey?" and he goes, "Someone who's climbing the walls, Ross. Poor Lex has his days.

So I usually try to keep his spirits up, telling him about some of the great games I've seen.

"Then sometimes we play a round of virtual golf . . . just us and our imaginations. Oops, I've skewed my tee shot off the notoriously tricky third, Lex. It's going to take some shot to get me out of that rough. . ."

I'm there, "So where is all this actually going?"

He's like, "Well, I wasn't the only one to notice he'd been down in the dumps the last couple of days. One or two of the, inverted commas, screws asked me to keep an eye on him. 'Come on, old chap, ' I said to him a few nights ago, 'let's play Elm Park, ' but he didn't want to know, Ross . . . and that's his favourite. 'Morning, Minister, ' he likes to say as we're walking the fairways. 'Morning, Chief Justice.'

"So the following morning, seven o'clock, I try to wake him but discover I can't. The screws hear my screams coming from the Peter and they naturally assume the chap has bugged out and bladed me up. One of them has a look through the bean chute and I tell them, 'It's Lex . . . he's unconscious.' So in they come . . .

medics and so forth . . . and they're asking me, 'What did he take?

What did he take?' and I'm saying, 'I didn't see the chap take a thing, ' and they're slapping his face and talking to him and trying to bring him around and then it suddenly hits me. He has diabetes."

I'm there, "He told you that?"

and he goes, "He didn't know, Ross. But my brother, Alisdair, he went into a diabetic coma one night, when we were boys. He was the same white colour as Lex. So I'm sitting on my bed, listening to the medics . . . rapid heartbeat, breathing normal, severe perspiration . . . and suddenly it's all coming back to me.

"It's hypoglycemia, I said. They all looked at me. 'Are you sure?'

one of them said. 'Positive, ' I said.

'Trust me.' So they took him off to the hospital, gave him a hit of Glucagon and 24 hours later, well, he's birdying that horrible seventh in Elm Park."

A screw touches me on the shoulder and tells me visiting time's over. As I'm walking away, he goes, "Thanks for the pen, Kicker, " and then, "I wonder what Madam will think when she sees me writing on the headed notepaper from this place!"