A car pulls up and is turned back. There are cheers all round. The driver takes a look at the 20 teenagers surrounding her car, another look at the skeleton of a burnt-out car on nearby wasteland, and turns back. The smell of burnt rubber fills the air after some children, the eldest about eight, have set the rubber-tyre swings of the local playground on fire. It turns out one of the little arsonists is her grandson.
Local residents swap traffic information.
One woman is frantic after receiving a call from her daughter, who works in a garage near the loyalist Rathcoole estate and is unable to get home. Staff have barricaded themselves inside the garage after rumours spread that the business's owner is a Catholic and menacing crowds are gathering outside. This is the worst I have seen since the early days of the Troubles. As the night progresses, the protests are taken over by older, more sinister-looking elements who set crates alight and throw stones at a couple of RUC Land Rovers. Further up the road, on Skegoneil Avenue, a derelict building is set on fire.