A man is clubbed over the head in a public bar, and much of the debate afterwards considers whether he was a fool to have gone there in the first place. The man was Denis Bradley, vice-chairman of the policing board, and the bar was in the Bogside in Derry.
Denis has lived in Derry most of his life, a conspicuous public figure, formerly a priest; but common sense dictates apparently that he should know which bars to stay out of and that if he gets hurt for going into the wrong one, he must share the responsibility for it.
A contributor to the political blog sluggerotoole.com put it like this: "I have to say that I condemn the attack, but from a man of Bradley's intelligence, I would ask what was he doing there in the first place."
You would almost think that the attacker had a reasonable complaint against a target irresistibly presenting itself. Denis Bradley is not equally safe in every bar in Derry and should know it. More, any demonstration that he lacks the savvy to avert danger compromises the sympathy he is due when he is attacked.
Denis Bradley certainly knows now that he isn't safe in the Bogside at night, if he didn't know it before a dissident republican with a hood on tried to stave in his skull with a wooden club.
He had gone to da Vinci's, a safer bar, to watch a Derry City game on a local TV channel. Da Vinci's wasn't playing that channel, but someone told him the bar in the Bogside was. He should have just gone home then, as promptly as if ordered to.
It is universally taken for granted in Northern Ireland that people must take sensible precautions for their safety because the risks are so widespread. Denis Bradley, for instance, is not just at risk from dissident republicans as a member of the policing board; he is also at risk from loyalists, like any Catholic or anyone who looks like a Catholic to a drunken lout. How would he fancy a pint on the Shankill Road?
I don't drink in the Felons club in Belfast because the last time I was there a very large IRA man called Bobby Storey escorted me into a corner and told me that I was a slug, and made a very impressive case in support of that charge.
One thing about the culture of caution within which we live is that it crosses all boundaries.
Bobby Storey couldn't go into some of the bars that I go into. Loyalists and republicans as much as ordinary citizens of Belfast have to restrict their movements for their own safety and have to learn the geography of security.
The layout of the city facilitates this to some degree. The so-called peace walls are enormous and extensive, and it is in the areas in which the sectarian geography is most fragmented, as in north Belfast, that people are most at risk.
You can be a milkman or a sectarian warlord and meet the same fate.
Probably, if you are a sectarian warlord, you will be more canny about security and will have lookouts and weapons at your disposal. You will also have a very tightly circum-
scribed field of movement. It is common to see in family homes a wrought-iron gate at the foot of the stairs. Many who had steel shutters on their windows to repel bullets have taken them down now.
The Sinn Féin councillor Bobby Lavery, whose home I visited, had heavy shutters bearing the deep impress of high-velocity bullets. His children would open them halfway to let in a little light to do their homework by.
An English woman who lived here once complained to me that she found it uncomfort-
able that so many of her boyfriends were armed.
A Catholic still probably sees fewer illegal guns than a Protestant would. I wasn't conscious that I knew anyone who was armed, but one day, when telling that story to a local trade union official, he laughed and looked about him.
Checking that no one was watching us, he turned and drew back his jacket to show that he had a large automatic pistol tucked down his trousers.
I don't know if any of my journalistic colleagues currently wears a pistol, but some have in the past.
Barry Cowan was once caught off guard by Paddy Devlin when interviewing him for Radio Ulster's Talkback. Paddy, who had a mischievous streak, drew his gun and set it on the studio table.
Cowan, the following week, interviewing Paddy again, was ready for him and drew his own pistol, and they conducted the interview, each with a weapon at his elbow.
Security is so much assimilated into our thinking and risk is such a normal part of life, that those who flout its elementary rules are thought not to be brave or candid, but simply foolish.
"He had it coming to him" can as easily mean that he deserved it or that he was stupidly careless. It is not enough that we should be intimidated; we should anticipate where threats come and intimidate ourselves, and save others the trouble. That is the wisdom of the street.
But Denis Bradley should be able to go into any bar he likes.