Post Pandemic Wisedom

I’m sitting in an airy Dublin Airport coffee shop trying to caffeinate my way past the counterfeit night’s sleep you get on a trans-Atlantic flight.  A crew of black-pants-white-shirts cleaners surge into the coffee shop, all joke-laughing loudly in a language I can’t discern.  Led by a fast-moving-fit-looking, twenty-something Dub, who stops only to run his hand through his highly coiffed brown hair, they rapidly wet wipe crumbs and wrappers from tables, sweep, mop, and yank bulging black-plastic bags from rubbish bins.  

“HEY KAREENA, KAREENA!” the Dub yells running his hand through his air, but not looking at anyone.

“Her names is Karum,” an olive-skinned young woman says, her eyes smiling under thick black eyebrows.

“Yeah, yeah,” the Dub runs his hand through his hair again. 

“HEY KAREENA!”

“It’s Karum is hers name,” the young woman repeats with laughing confidence.

“Yeah, yeah, tell ‘er she ken go on ‘er break but be back be haf eight.”

The confident young woman stalks towards the edge of the field of tables.

“Hey K,” she yells to a slight, olive-skinned young woman with long black hair. “You kin go on breaks.”

Karum stops halfway through a broad table wipe, stands upright without looking at anyone and leaving the rag on the table, ambles off, eyes down at the floor.

The cleaning crew swarm past me, avoiding my table; their glances noting it for later.

Ten minutes later outside I see Karum on an isolated traffic island stamping out a cigarette, smoking gushing from her mouth and nose. 

I pass her, now it’s my turn to look down and make for the taxi-rank.

As I approach a bottle-green Toyota Camry, a stubby, balding sixty-something bolts from the driver’s seat and limping, deftly opening the back door on his second heavy step.

“Jump in dere now sur,” he says on a loud exhale as he grabs the wheelie bag from my hand and scoots around to the back.

As I sit in, the boot slams closed behind me.

Dangling from the rearview mirror is his taxi driver’s license for.

“Tommy de calls me,” he says, as he drops heavily into the driver’s seat, his eyes catching mine reading the license.  “Me mammy called me Thomas but all the lads calls me dat, since de vury first day a scooell, an’ de brudders batin’ de livin’ daylights outta us.”

“Are you awright there,” I deliberately change the subject, trying to hide my embarrassment at being caught checking his license.  

“That’s a heavy limp you have.”

“I’ll tell ya now de God’s honest trute: A frien’ a mine owens a pub balow in Spain an’ I wuz down ta him two munts back ta spend de few quid I got from Leinster House for de Covid.  Ya know how Meehal Martin wuz splashin’ cash around ferta confuse us all, an’ I wuz afeard de bollix’d take it back if it stayed in me bank account too long.  Anyways I hadn’t seen Larry for munts, so I fly down with Ryanair.  A course de first we done was go on a huge piss up an’ we wuz dancin’ with dese two ould birds in he’s pub.”

He stops for a breath, scratches his head.

“Jaysys I never axed ya where ya wuz goin?”

“Yeah, we’ll just head into town an’ let me fish the address out of my phone.”

“Anyways, balow in Spain all dem pints had me tinkin’ I wuz John Tra-fucken-volta an’ didn’t I fall ohver, pissed drunk I wuz, an’ de side a me knee got kinda twisted on a step.  Don’t ya know down dere de pubs don’t have no inside nor outside, they’re all a bit a boat, an’ de dancefloor was haf in an’ haf out, but I wuz fully out … outta me fucken moind dat is!” 

He laughs a dry taximan-laughing-at-his-own-joke laugh and then twist-nods tightening his grip on the steering wheel. 

“But didn’t I had ta go ta me doctor when I got home, an’ he says ta me, ‘now Tommy tell me de God’s honest trute, whot wuz ya doin?’  So, I tol’ him, but I tol’ him ta say nuthin’ ta de missus.  I mean she’s on’y me girlfrien’ anyways, de wife moved out years ago, but still an’ all we’re sharin’ a flat an’ I don’t want no trouble dere, an’ she has a heap a brudders dat we do run inta when we’re out on de town.  So, de doctor gives me some tablets ferta take, an’ I’m ta come back ta him in two weeks.  Sure, ‘tis on’y an’ me walkin’ out de door dat he says I’m not ta drink wid dese tablets, well on’y have tree pints a night, sure dat’s not drinkin!”

He shakes his head, sighs loudly.

“Wat does dese doctors be tinkin’ when de give ya orders like dat, sure dere isn’t a man in Dublin as cud live like dat, not unless he wuz de driest of de driest a dryballs in de city!”

His head keeps shaking slowly as he plumbs the depths of his disbelief at such foolishness.

“Now a frien’ a mine,” he starts up from nowhere, “just phoned me on de phone dis mornin’ ta say dat he’s new hybrid taxi, I mean it’s a coupley a years old, but it’s new compared ta dis ould warhorse I’m drivin’.  I passed two hundret an’ seventy towsand on de clock a dis Toyoda last month.  Yeah, yeah I’m not makin’ dat up.  When I bot dis car, it had turty towsand on de clock, an’ I near kilt de ould civil serfant dat sould it ta me wid questions on where did he drive an’ how often, just ta be sure de cute Curry whore wuzn’t lyin’ ta me – you’re not from Curry are ya?  Ya sound like a lad from down de country with a bit ow a Yank mixed in.”

“You’re right there, but not Kerry, Mayo … God Help Us!”

“Gawd he’p ye’se is rite, I don’t haf no time for sport tallatall, but as far as I unnerstan’ from de GAA professors below in de pub, ye’se is never done losin’ All Irelands,” he shakes his head, purses his lips.  “Sure, ye’se’d want ta cop yerself’s on an’ win wan just ta shut up all dem GAA professors as does sit in front a every telly in Ireland.  I can’t stan’ dem, how dey knows ever’thin’ … after de match, but de couldn’t tell ya nuthin’ bafore, nor let ya see deir shaggin’ bettin’ slips neither.  Oh no, what a shower a shites dey are.  But anyways, I wuz tellin’ ya about me frien’ wid de hybrid, anudder Toyoda but wanna dem little Preeuz tings, anyways, de battary dies, an’ da ya know how much de garage wanted offa him for a new battary?”

“Oh, I imagine a lot, they’re sayin’ those batt’ries are fierce expensive,” I try to summon up empathy for the unknown taximan.

“Fourteen towsand Euros!” he falls uncharacteristically silent and nods for effect.  “Yeah, four…teen towsand, can ya believe dat?  An’ dat ould fool Eamonn Ryan, he’s tryin’ ta get us all ta drive dem cars with fourteen towsand Euro battaries.  Jaysys, I’d luv ta meet dat fella of a Saturdah night round haf ten … an’ me wid a hammer!”

An hour later, my bag dropped off, I’m quixotically fighting the loss of a night’s sleep waiting for a different mode of transportation: Dublin Bus.

“D’ya know how much this costs?” I ask a round-faced, fifty-something man who’s standing perfectly erect next to the bus stop.

I’ve been reading the tiny words and digits on the bus stop sign for five minutes without getting any wiser as to how to actually pay your way onto a bus.

“Two Euros with yer card,” he answers, taking a half step backwards.

“With a credit card?” I persist.

“Nooo!  With yer Leap card,” he answers, his face clouding with concern as he steps back two full steps.  “De bus doesn’t know nuthin about credit cards … an’ … an’ he’ll charge ya more than two Euros if you use cash, with no change back.”

“Oh ok, … thanks,” I hold up both palms, sorry for having caused him some distress.

“An’ he’s late,” he steps back to his original position and points at a digital sign that reads: “0 MINUTES”

Then he resumes his straight-backed-eyes-forward stance.

The double-decker Dublin Bus arrives.  I drop three Euro coins into the fare machine, climb the stairs, take my seat and peer out at streets upon streets of tidy row houses, their slate roofs snaking off into the distance.  

The bus rumbles on, making me squint each time it’s tall roof whacks the branches of a doubly unfortunate tree stuck on the side of busy Blackhorse Avenue.

A young Asian couple boards the bus and take their seats two rows up from me.

McKee Barracks dominates my viewing.  Ironically, it’s an achingly picturesque yellowish-orange bricked cavalry barracks replete with tiny towers overlooking gateways, garrets for lonely officers far from home, tall, peaked grey-slated roofs.  The Brits, long before they enjoyed Brexiteering, built it back in 1892 as home for the 10th Hussars; who then Hussared Dublin into submission for thirtyish years, slashing down the Irish from the backs of the seven hundred cavalry horses stabled in the barracks.  Originally named Marlborough Barracks for one of Winston Churchill’s forbears, it was rebranded by the victorious Irish, as they exiteered from the Empire, in honour of Dick McKee.  McKee was a planner with the Squad, Michael Collins’ counterintelligence unit within the IRA that killed or badly wounded fifteen British not-so-secret agents on the first Irish Bloody Sunday: November 21, 1920. The future-Brexiteers shot McKee that evening as his body full of broken bones was “escaping” from Dublin Castle.

We pass this puzzle piece of Irish history and stall at another, more puzzling piece: The North Circular Road – the bypass road down which traffic can barely pass.

From two rows up I hear the young Asian woman ask:  

“Do I looks Chineeze?”

“Wot?” the young man asks.

“Do … I … looks Chineeeeeeze?” she repeats with appropriate emphasis.

“Yes,” he nods reassuringly

“I do?”

Her eyebrow raises as she smiles.

“Yes, you do. Koreans no speak Chineeze, can Japaneeeze, speak Chineeeze?” he asks.

“No, just pirtend Chineeeze, you know … to confuse.”

The bus lurches through traffic, brakes squealing just before it devours the cars ahead of us.  Thusly we edge through Stoneybatter and along Blackhall Place.  The massive dinosaur that is a Dublin Bus double-decker lurches and squeals its way through a ninety-degree turn onto the Quays.  Immediately I feel a rush of Cultie-comfort: “If you can find de river, den you can find Heuston an’ de train home” – went the young redneck adage.

I debus at O’Connell Bridge: The statue of the burly Kerry-man smiling sardonically at his own bridge, his head plastered with pigeon shite.

As an unmitigated Cultie (subgenus; rugby, literate) my points of reference in Dublin are the Palace Bar, Landsdowne Road and Easons.  It’s an October Thursday at lunchtime so the first two don’t make sense … not yet.  Either Easons has been corporatized into a second-rate disappointment of a book shop or a younger me’s taste in books was decidedly disappointing.  I repair to the redoubtable book purveyor Hodges Figgis where I spend a respectable period of time picking out a book, which I immediately regret buying.  Then I wander through some National museums, viewing in the Museum of Archaeology what looks suspiciously like Game of Thrones props (complete with a yellowed, fractured skull) and then onto the Museum of Natural History or as the ever concise and witty Dubs have rebranded as the Dead Zoo.

With Landsdowne Road’s Aviva Stadium not open for rugby this Thursday afternoon, I’m left with no choice but to repair to the Palace Bar.  This is the, so genuine you’d think it was made for tourists, pub from which Michael Collins is alleged to have directed operations to assist the Brexiteers in honing their exiteering skills.  The Palace was also haunted by one of Ireland’s greatest poets, Patrick Kavanagh, who ordered copious quantities of pints with his “thick tongued mumble,” occasionally paying for said pints with bouncing cheques.

“A towrist is it y’are,?” the thickset young barman askes, as he sets down on the counter a creamy pint of Guinness.

“Yeah, yeah, sorta, here for a weddin’, down the country.”

“We doan’t see dat many Yanks days, not since de Covid,” he folds his pudgy arms and stares across the counter at me.  “De Covid scared youse off so it did, but sure youse’ll be back, de Yanks cannit survive widout us.”

“Well, I’m actually from here, you know like, … I grew up here, but I have been out there a lon….”

“Ah sure I on’y seen de dollars in yer wallet, dats what says where youse’re from dese days: dollars is Yanks; Euros could be anywan; an’ Sterlin’ … ya never see dat accept maybe some lad back from Old Traffords.  It’s loike hen’s teet dese days ta see a pickgure a Queen Lizzie on a tenner.”

“Interestin’” I say, closely watching this behind-the-counter-sage closely as he grabs a damp cloth and wipes the counter.

“A weddin’ youse’re home fer is it?” his unibrow squiggles interrogatively.

“Yeah, yeah, down the coun….”

“I’ll mark yer card for ya now wid dem weddin’s down de countree,” he leans over the counter and lowers his voice to a whisper.  “Doan’t be askin’ de bar manager when de bar is clowsin’, he’ll lie …” he nods slowly, “an’ tell ya much later than it’s really clowsin’, so youse don’t get ta stock up wid pints an’ keep him dere wid all noight.”

He leans in so close I can smell stale cigarette smoke off his breath.

“Youse wanta ask a young barman, or a gurl, de do have foreign gurls survin’ down de country.  See, de young fellas don’t know no better dan ta tell ya de trute, so youse ken have a haf gallon set up on de table in front a ya at clowsin’ time.”

Over the next twenty fours I soak my mind in this thousand-year-old-city wisdom.  Then I decamp for the hinterlands, where two days later, buttressed by this experience, I survive a “steak-or-salmon-red-or-white” wedding retaining fully half my sanity and a tenth of my liver. 

In fear of both losing my hard-earned status as an amateur drinker and the deadly hangovers that accompany this status, I forgo the unibrowed barman’s advice on creating a strategic reserve of pints at closing time.  When the bar lights flash on and off, and a drunken maul mushrooms at the bar, I drift outside the hotel for some air.

It turns out fresh air is not so fresh at hotel bar entrances as three young women … no let’s be honest they’re probably not even eighteen, belch thick clouds of sickly-sweet flavoured vape-smoke, while a group of older men … no let’s be honest, they’re probably only in their forties and fifties but have been aged decades by alcohol, puff energetically on cigarettes.

I try to step away, but the way forward is blocked in front by a minibus and when I turn to go down the path I’m blocked by a forty-something-going-on-seventy-year-old man leaning heavily on two canes, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, smoke gushing down his nose.  He’s stalled out as he tries to catch his breath.

“Sorry dere,” he gasps but appears unable to restart his motion.

I step back not wanting to appear impatient.

“I’n waitin’ fer de bus,” he gasps out a mouthful of smoke, nodding at the minibus.

“We’ll be goain’ now when de rest a dem hoolagans cum outta de bar,” clips a short, stocky man leaning against the minibus.  He’s got a Yankees baseball cap jammed so far onto his head that his ears protrude up past the navy-blue fabric.

“Do I haf time for annudder pint?” starts the man on the canes.

“Ya doan’t,” the brim of the Yankee’s hat moves over and back rapidly.  “We’re awready late, if dem udders doan’t cum out soon ‘til just be you an’ me on de bus.”

“‘Tis turrible,” the man on the canes turns and stares me in the eye.  “De way dis country is gone, we hafta take a bus over here from ours village jest ta get a pint of a Saturdah night.”

“Dats on’y causa dem two publicans we haf in our village,” the stocky fella turns to me, his finger wagging in my face.  “See dere wuz on’y two pubs in our village an’ dey boat shut down durin’ de Covid see, an’ den wan a dem wuz owned be a big farmer, on’y he didn’t bodder his arse openin’ it up agin, just took de free Covid money an’ never said nathin ta no wan.”

He draws in a breath, his chunky torso swelling, shoulders rising.

“An’ d’other wan is pure disaster altagether, sure he cud har’ly run it atallatallatall even when people wuz looin’ for drink he couldn’t make a bob in dere.”

The brim of his hat moves slowly from side to side.

Out of the hotel comes a short man with bandy legs and wild eyes; his right arm fishing deep in his pocket for coins. 

Behind him lurks two more scowling, prematurely aged faces.

The bandy-legged man pulls a two Euro coin from his pocket and holds it up.

“Is dis de bus fer Lourdes?” he calls out loudly, dropping the coin into the stocky man’s hand. 

Everyone, even the underage drinker-smokers, laugh louder than the joke seems to warrant.

“Ya know whot?” he says, slipping a box of twenty Silk Cut cigarette from the shirt pocket of the man on the canes.  “I went ta Lourdes wid wan short leg an’ wan long leg, an’ I cum back wid two short legs!”

The growing crowd peals with laughter.

The bandy-legged man lights two cigarettes and hands one to the man on the canes.

“Will we go so?” the stocky man asks, the brow of his hat surveying the crowd.

“Will ye cum wid us gurls?” the bandy-legged man yells over to the vapers.

The teenagers titter but turn their backs, vape-smoke billowing above their hair.

“Cum on den,” the stocky man says, the door of the bus opening with a slap.  “Mammy’ll be asleep when I get home an’ I can watch a bitta porn on de telly.”

“Jaysys we’ll all go wid you so,” the man on the canes says through a mouthful of smoke.

“Ya willn’t, cause Mammy’ll smell dem cigarettes off ye an’ kill me in de mornin’.”

Slowly they each negotiate their way up the two steps into the minibus.

The door slaps closed.

The bus purrs down the driveway, its red lights shimmering in exhaust smoke.