THE journalists that hung around west Belfast in the early days of my childhood were to the best of my recollection exclusively from elsewhere.
A foreign reporter once gave my wee brother £5 to wrap a scarf around his face and hold a milk bottle with a rag hanging out of it.
The actual rioters obviously weren't young enough or cute enough.
Writing about events we've now for some reason started calling 'historical' - but that I can vividly remember from the time - always seems strange because in my mind they're not at all historic.
And for those who lost family those events are still shaping the present as they struggle to come to terms with not just the loss of someone they love but the realisation that those responsible are unlikely to ever be held to account.
Earlier this week the Secretary of State Theresa Villiers said that she was optimistic that there could be an agreement on how to deal with the past.
The various mechanisms agreed at Stormont House and then reneged on by the British seems to be the favoured model in a far from ideal situation.
Last Friday a court heard that officers from outside police forces would be brought in by the chief constable to investigate the activities of the informer known as Stakeknife, thought to be west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, as soon as money to fund the investigation can be found of course.
The republican leadership no longer deny that Stakeknife was a double agent during the time when he was executing people for being alleged informers, although they do dispute the timescale during which he was operating at a high level within the IRA.
Whether he was really stood down in 1990 or continued to kill people right up until the death of single mother Caroline Moreland in 1994 will be for the new investigation to determine.
Admissions of Stakeknife's existence by republicans is a fairly recent occurrence, for it wasn't always the case. When he was outed in 2003 they went to great lengths to cover up his activities with press conferences and a newspaper interview denying he was a 'tout'.
Looking back that attempted cover up now seems farcical, but at the time it managed to split opinion in republican areas with an unfriendly 'agenda driven' media blamed for demonising the nationalist community.
In reality the IRA knew Scappaticci was a suspected informer long before he was outed in the press, the Sandy Lynch case that led to the imprisonment of Danny Morrison had rung major alarm bells at the time.
Last week I reported on the existence of a high level agent at the top of the Ardoyne IRA, a man who went under the codename AA.
The activities of the IRA commander at the time of the Shankill bomb and numerous other killings had remained under wraps despite being known to republicans for almost 14 years.
I'm proud to work for a newspaper that still allows its reporters time and support to carry out investigations such as the one into the activities of AA.
Just like Scappaticci great lengths have been taken to rubbish the allegations that were concealed not just from the victims but from the 'volunteers', the men and women who followed AA's orders, who were expected to die or go to jail for the IRA but not be told he truth by their leadership.
In this case however there has been no press conference or interviews. Republicans appear to have learnt lessons from the failed Scappaticci media experiment.
Instead it's been left to the PSNI chief constable to do the carefully qualified denials. It's a strange reality we've found ourselves in isn't it?
There's also been a bit of shoot the messenger involved, made easier for the propaganda machine by the fact I come from within the community I now find myself reporting on.
Reveal uncomfortable truths and you stand accused of being anti peace, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I've interviewed enough broken hearted mothers in my time to make me value and cherish the more peaceful times we now live in.
Look too closely at the disgraceful, murderous activities of the British government and their paid informers and you start to wonder were we all just laboratory rats in some crazy scientist's experiment? Who was really fighting who and more importantly why were so many innocent people allowed to die?
I'm not holding out hope that the British government will give up all their secrets and furnish victims with the truth about the high levels of collusion in deaths here in the north, but then why would they when the other participants in the conflict show no sign of doing the same.
The methods of denial may have changed since Scappaticci was outed but don't be fooled, the intent remains the same.
