There’s a squadcar pulled in just up the road, administering justice; attending the scourge that is bored fifteen year old lads around Halloween. I think he just gave them a slap on the wrist, followed by a good hard stare. So now the little cunts will be walking past me on their way home. Bollox. Young, hard and with something to prove, they’re anything but deflated. My movements are more measured than ever, giving nothing, no ammunition for them to engage me. ‘Why do I always wear such colorful clothes?’ says I, brickin’it.
They shape past, dragging their accents behind, like a ball and chain. I’ve escaped, about a hundered yards down the smallest and bravest of them turns to give me the finger. I don’t even acknowledge it, so they start kicking the shit into the nearest wheelie bin. There’s nothing for them, dreams being for ponces, but the joys of destruction.
The bus is empty when I get on. I decide to stay downstairs, wanting to avoid the brash stacatto which will presumably dominate the upstairs by the time we hit the dueller. Regally, I annex not one but two seats; for to serve my great anus in great comfort. Stopped at the lights of Foxrock Church you can see the kids in halloween costumes sprint for the bus stop. I pat myself on the back, well played, I shant be dealing with them.
Until we pull up, and they decide to sit downstairs.
Their accents could not be more different from the kids earlier. The same age, the same suburbs but a world apart. A short, tubby disaster with too much make-up and ripped tights sits in front of me. Why she’s sitting there is beyond me, it’s the single seat behind the stairs, and I seperate her from her friends. She asks for a tissue, I say sorry, and go back to my calculations on the worlds rotundity-or some other equally irrelevant distraction.
Then her mate, with the belt for a skirt and the surplus suspenders approaches. Moral support, they can’t fit on the same seat, and I simply won’t be hemmed in. “Sorry, can we swa…” “I’m going upstairs”. Of course it was rude, but then of course, I don’t care. I can’t stand the sound of their wide vowels and abbreviations any more than the short mean snarls of the ones at the bus stop. The lot can piss off, I want peace. Inner, outer or what’s outer inner. Any peace at all will do.
Then it’s the pub, the club, the whiskey and a quiet departure when it all gets too much.
I can’t really afford a taxi so I walk to Donnybrook. I fall into a leather passenger seat just before that club, y’know the one, the notorious one. The one with puberty’s worst excesses on display. God it’s awful, I try to spot the kids from earlier-overcome by a certain morose fascination.
The taxi driver is dumb, which suits me fine, as I’m over-run with thoughts tonight. I haven’t wanted to speak to anyone since I left the house. But stopped at the lights in silence with Shakira in the background, you gain an appreciation of how backward a policy that is.
Three interactions, three opportunities to learn about the world outside my head, shunned. “You’re such a typical southsider”.
