I was not lucky with traffic this weekend at all. On Sunday, as I dropped my sister into Cork for the 5.30 train, the city was deathly quiet. I should have known that I was dancing in the eye of a hurricane. Gardai were randomly perched like magpies in Blackpool, and on MacCurtain St., and on the Lower Road. I racked my brains trying to think of their purpose… and then the news headline on the radio hit me like a sack of hurleys: “full time at Parc Ui Caoimh sees Tipperary defeat Waterford by a scoreline of 3-14 to 1-12″. Instantly I was engulfed by a tsunami of blue and white and blue and yellow; a torrent of traffic hit me at once from all angles. Car loads of angry Waterford fans – 20,000 John Mullanes on a mission to get back home faster than everyone else. My ‘TS’ registered car decked out in Cork colours did not help matters.
On Monday I headed west to go fishing. Still traumatised by the events of the day before, I was anxious about getting back behind the wheel. I considered what the road to West Cork would be like on such a sunny bank holiday weekend, but I timed it so that I was heading west as they went east, and I laughed to myself as I saw the tailbacks from Innishannon well past the green chipvan. By the time I was heading home, the road would be quiet – I had surely beaten the bank holiday traffic. But Murphy was a Cork man, and his law is well enforced in these parts. It hit me in the most unlikely of places – Barryroe. Out of nowhere, the road was suddenly thick with farmers, farmers’ children, and farmers’ wives… like a herd of wildebeest. It was the bowling match to end all bowling matches.
If you are wondering why there was bowling on the road, then I will introduce you to road bowling – thats pronounced ‘bowel’ as in intestine. It is a weekly ritual performed by all those shifty bog men that you occasionally see hanging around the Dairygold co-op, who come out of the woodwork on a Sunday and congregate on a random road in the middle of nowhere.
Shrouded in secrecy, little is known about these events. Some believe that one of the farmers carries a heavy metal ball like a shotput, which each man must throw as far as he can. Others speculate that the goal is to stop the traffic and randomly abduct one of the passing drivers. Some even say that bowling is merely a form of protest march by rural types, to win back the country that was stolen from them – an endless campaign for “higher quotas”, “Brits out”, and “bring back Glenroe” rolled into one.
But you might point out that Barryroe is just five miles from Clonakilty, esteemed winner of the Entente florale, cosmopolitan tourist resort, broadband-enabled up-and-coming village. Only five miles from Bandon – commuter town and home of Graham Norton and Brian Crowley MEP. And you would be right – this is no backwards John B. Keane town. There are foreigners here. There are the blow-ins too – they sometimes speak with a Dublin slant to their accent. There are also the “normal enough” locals, they still have Sacred Heart lights and they know the score of the GAA match last weekend, but at the same time they have a computer in the house, and a satelite dish.
But among them lives the bowling class. That guy who stands very still and stares at you when you’re not looking… with or without an eerie toothless grin, wearing the same suit that he has worn for 40 years. The kid who never talks, and goes to school less than once a week, but the teachers don’t care. You might occasionally encounter an old fella stopping traffic for 10mins as he moves a herd of cattle back and forth from one field to another. This is how they train for the bowling matches.
For hours I sat there as ordered by the steward (the guy with the yellow County Council jacket)… too late to turn back, facing the firing squad, roasting hot – record temperature this year and no a/c. The steward spoke to me, and although I summoned all that I had learned in my years living in the most rural parts of West Cork, still I could not understand his speech, and the only words I grasped were “they’re big shtrong fellas too”. When he gave me the signal, there was nothing for it but to drive into the crowd. A teenager shouted angrily over the decision to leave the cars go. A Liverpool fan, I could tell by his face, I knew he drove a Honda civic, or possibly a ‘95 Starlet, and that he would block the old widow’s chimney with turf.
A thousand outraged eyes turned on me, and the record temperature rose even further. Sometimes a man would franticly wave me on, urging me to speed up to let them return to their business, but what could I do? There was a wall of mulling bodies in front of me and if I were to accelerate I knew I could very easily become a missing person. To quote a sweaty bald man with a bodhran: “such a crowd I’d never seen before”. This must have been the bowling All-Ireland final… the World Championships, probably. And somehow, I made it out alive.
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Apparently there was 300 new Gardaí on the roads this weekend too; the gf reckons they were on “commission” – presumably some kind of bonus scheme for pulling x number of dangerous lawbreaks going 3 miles over the limit – but surely the country would be up in arms if that sort of thing went on? Oh, hang on, this is Oireland…
I saw a couple of them dropping into O’Driscolls in Balinlough for their lunch yesterday, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud in their faces. Nothing wrong with young Gardaí I suppose, it’s just hard to respect them when you know they have little or no hands-on experience, and they look abour 12 years old.
Its funny actually – they say each bank holiday weekend that there are hundreds of new Gardaí on the road, but I never see any evidence of the bank holiday crackdowns. I drove to Dublin and back on Saturday and only saw one kit-kat cop with a speedgun, outside Urlingford, who craned his neck and perked to attention as I drove past at 63mph. No doubt I’ll be getting points in the post
I’m all for more Gardaí on the road to improve road safety… but as you mention, a money making exercise is a different story. They focus on the few white spots, like the Dublin road near Glanmire, where people tend to exceed the speedlimit but in a generally safe capacity.
I know what you mean about the young Gardaí… whats worse are the ones in town on the bicycle – I nearly crashed my car laughing when I saw them first.
I did see quite a few over the weekend James, and the aforementioned gf’s sister, based in Limerick, reckons about 300 of the tiny navy-suited fellas were just released from their cages in Templemore, accounting for the crackdown (give the n00bs something to do).
Yes, speeding as a revenue generator is a complete pain in the hole. Last time I was caught was on the way back from Shannon at 1.30 am with the old man in tow, Garda car parked under a petrol station canopy on what would be a dangerous crossroads during the day. Be honest with you, I didn’t even see the sign. Nobody in the car did.
The bicycle Gardaí are a laugh alright, but you’ll never catch me complaining about more beat cops. Adding beat cops is the only proven way to lower crime rates. CCTV, that we spend millions on? No proof whatsoever. Not a jot.
Ah well, at least it gives me a chance to link to McDohell’s site with the words authoritarian incompetent. I suppose you’ve got nofollow turned on to spoil my fun?
Actually that reminds me – I did get a plugin to remove that nofollow but never activated it. The speed cameras are a waste alright – aside from the problems with the footage standing up in court, they don’t seem to work half the time – I’m told that its because theres no film in them.
There was a speed camera as you come off the M4 between Leixlip and Lucan which was supposedly the most profitable speed camera in the country. Its in one of those crazy spots where the motorway ends and then suddenly the speed limit drops to 50mph – for months I passed it at speed without even knowing it was there but never got anything in the post.
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