There is as much inevitability attached to happy events as there is to those more catastrophic and destructive in their nature and so it came to pass that on the ninth day of his imprisonment Mac found himself, Iseult and Gilly, as usual, watching as another lorry reversed into the courtyard and the Pilers did their job. With the lorry emptied it was now the Rippers turn to tear the pile apart and prepare it for the Burners.

With a show of gusto intended only for the many louts watching them like beady birds and a dizziness induced by the meagre rations, Mac threw himself at the pile and began to rip off covers and blank pages.

‘That’s right,’ shouted the closest lout. ‘Get stuck in, Granddad. There will be no breakfast until this lot is no more.’ The lout waved his whip in the air.

Mac was starving hungry and so he hurriedly grabbed a pile of papers and seeing nothing seemingly printed on the top he threw the pile onto the wheelbarrow without even a second look. A Burner pushed the wheelbarrow to the closest bonfire and tipped the paper onto the flames.

The words Mac an Bhaird’s Miscellanea burned briefly and brightly before the pile of paper joined all the ash.

Others were far less inclined to take part and try as they may by the end of that day Mac and Gilly hadn’t managed to recruit anybody else.

Most people agreed in principle with the idea and said that they would do what they thought they could get away with but so ferocious were the boiler-suited louts and so dismal were the conditions that it was all that most people could do to stop themselves from getting a beating.

Anyone caught doing anything seemingly untoward would have their food and blankets and any other possessions they might have managed to acquire thrown onto the nearest bonfire. Anyone who tried to intervene in any way would have the same thing happen to him or her.

If at the end of another gruelling day of hard labour you were presented with a curling cheese and coleslaw sandwich and a small bottle of cheap cola I am pretty sure you would much rather eat what you were given than spend the night shivering in the dark with no food and no blanket.

Over the days that followed Mac and Gilly started to spread the word of their (partial) rebellion to the other people forced to work in the courtyard.

Some, like Doctor Iseult Ó Buachalla, world-renowned author of The Tallowcentric Tradition: History, Uses and Abuses of Ecclesiastical Tapers, Votives and Veladoras (who last time we met had been stuck sobbing on Mac’s bus for three days) didn’t take much persuading.

‘I wasn’t at my best the last time you saw me,’ she said to Mac.

‘None of us were, Doctor Ó Buachalla,’ smiled Mac.

‘No-one will see me like that again,’ she continued. ‘I will make damned sure of that.’

‘I’m sure you will, Iseult,’ Mac replied. ‘I’m sure you will.’

The two friends struggled through the next day as best they could.

It was far too much for them to really rip everything to shreds so they satisfied themselves with pulling out intentionally blank pages, errata and other end pages and then hurling the books to one side. The courtyard was knee-deep in books and papers and pages anyway so they figured that no one would really notice what they were doing.

Furthermore, and because both men were eidetic in their recall, Gilly and Mac set about trying to roughly catalogue every book, manuscript and pamphlet they came across.

‘The ground will be our new shelves,’ whispered Gilly. ‘We must at least try to remember every name and title we read here.’

‘Melvil Dewey would turn in his perfectly-indexed grave,’ smiled Mac.

‘You always were the gloomy one,’ teased Gilly as the two men lay down to try and sleep. The bonfires were burning fiercely and ash still fell like confetti at a funeral.

Mac and Gilly had been undergraduates together and had remained friends ever since. They even got married on the same day, to the Garritty sisters, Aoibhinn and Sibeal. Whereas Gilly and Aoibhinn had recently celebrated their Diamond wedding anniversary, Mac lost Sibeal to a sarcoma in 1973.

‘Sleep well, my friend,’ whispered Mac. ‘This is simply the last of it. Nothing more.’

It began to rain and the two men pulled a ripped tarpaulin over their heads.

After a backbreaking day of hard work, harsh threats and cheap food Mac, Gilly and the rest of the Rippers settled down for the night in their corner of the courtyard. Bathed in the orange light of the flames and buried in soot, the two men sat beside each other.

‘Genius, absolute genius!’ whispered Gilly to Mac. ‘The Pilers pull the books from the lorries. The Rippers tear them to pieces and the Burners put them on the bonfires.’

Gilly was one of the world’s leading authorities on feudal labour management. He winced as he tried to get comfortable on the hard ground. ‘This is the truly the end, my dear friend. We cannot get back from here.’

Mac agreed. ‘Culture is always the first victim of despotism,’ he said and then swilled a mouthful of pink lemonade around his mouth.

‘Our time has already been,’ Mac continued, ‘but if we carry on this way then the world will one day simply refuse to spin and hang limp in the eternal darkness like all the other dead stars.’

‘There you are Professor Fancy Words!’ sneered a familiar voice. ‘Feeling better after your little comfort break?’

This time Mac didn’t reply. The lout continued.

‘It’s high time you and your wordy friend got to work, I think.’ The lout pointed at a group of people gathering beside a giant pile of papers. ‘You’ve got three hours before breakfast so go and join the rest of the Rippers.’

Three hours later a box of stale sandwiches and a crate of cheap fizzy drinks was dumped beside the Rippers. ‘You’ve got ten minutes before the next fleet of lorries arrive,’ sneered the lout.

‘Bon bleedin’ appetit.’

Mac woke to find Gilly wiping his face with a filthy rag. ‘Where am I?’ he croaked. ‘What happened?’

‘They dragged you out at first light and threw you here,’ whispered his terrified friend.

Here was a pile of rotting rubbish beside the toilets. Gilly lifted a sooty bottle of fizzy orange liquid to Mac’s lips.

‘I saved this for you,’ he whispered. ‘Sip slowly, my friend.’ Mac took a sip, winced but took another anyway. Gilly pulled the bottle away. ‘Careful, Mac, not too much at once.’

Gilly pulled a paper bag from his pocket and handed Mac half a chicken wrap. The chicken was coated in something vaguely crumb-like and lay beside a piece of limp lettuce.

Mac chewed in silence for a while and then managed to smile at his friend.

‘Well, Professor Giollaiosa Ó Ruairc, this is a thing and a half and no mistake.’

‘Indeed it is, Professor Amhalgaidh Mac an Bhaird. Indeed it is.’

Mac spent two days and nights in the portable toilet.

It was dark and the bowl was overflowing. The smell was beyond endurable. Unable to sit on the seat, Mac found himself leaning, half-laying, on the wall.

Time crawled like the flies on his face. And when Time crawls it likes to play tricks. Hours become seconds and seconds become infinite.

And infinity becomes the moment before the moment that is after the moment before.

‘Leave him alone!’ screamed the lout. ‘Leave him alone! How really dare you tell me to leave him alone!’

A filthy froth flew from his mouth and spattered Mac.

‘We’ll leave you alone,’ screamed the lout.

And with that he dragged Mac to one corner of the yard where a line of portable toilets stood waiting. The lout opened the door of the closest one, threw Mac inside and bolted the door behind him. As if this wasn’t quite enough, the lout completed the job by laying a heavy paving slab against the plastic door.

‘This is what it feels like to be left alone,’ he screamed through the door.