Was having a raucous natter to a fella whose a shop in Cabra about how he deals with the high level of junkies and the like robbing his shop.

Let’s call him Barney since I never asked his name. Barney produces a sizeable baseball bat.

“What’s dat?” He says.

“A baseball bat?”

“No, he says, “it’s an argument diffuser”

He tells me he keeps nine knives behind the counter, so I ask to see them and for a demonstration of how he employs them.

“Well,” he says,” When they demand money, I say hold on and I’ll get it for you now, I reach over here lift them up (he demonstrates with serious looking meaty implements.. and emerges with two huge knives above his head)… “and I tell them take it out of that (or take the change outta that.”

In a lengthy conversation he and his employee explained you cannot seem a soft touch or they’ll come back and rob you repeatedly.

He kept employing the word mill as a verb as in to mill. I mill them he’d say mean he’d give them as severe battering as he could manage with his various tools. I give them a milling. We mill them.

He said he never calls the guards prefers to deal with them on his own terms, which are once for all don’t come back.