Snapshot!

Snapshot!

Drama in a Belfast bistro

A young girl was lunching with a friend in a Belfast bistro when two teenage Irish terrorists came in with a gun and a large box, from which a fuse protruded. While one of them held the patrons at gunpoint, the other placed the bomb in the middle of the restaurant, felt in his pockets and, in the ultimate example of an Irish joke, had to borrow a box of matches from one of the terrified patrons. He lit the fuse and decamped -- the bomb went off prematurely, injuring or killing some of the people inside.

Figure 1 shows the condition in which the girl presented to the hospital emergency department. The chair leg was extracted and I subsequently repaired the scars on what was, in fact, a minimally damaged leg (Figure 2).

Cholm W Williams
Plastic Surgeon
Hornsby, NSW

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