Nuclear fear clouds debate on fuel crisis
for the slightly less newpaper-friendly account of my time in Chernobyl - http://nickylarkin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/chernobyl-vodka-cancer/
Henry was a Protestant who worked in the wine cellar of the local hotel. He’d lived in New York and worked in hotels with The Mericans for thirty odd years. He’d just come back to the town since the turn of the century. An equal opportunities racist, Henry hated them all. The Blacks, the Jews, the Queers, the Spics, the Mics, the Wops….there was no end to his prejudice. Henry even hated himself. He was the one who’d first mentioned Spud-Niggers, or crackers as he also liked to call them. But Henry had a different definition for a Spud-Nigger than me. He told me the Spud-Niggers were the Scottish-Protestants who’d emigrated to the States. Them and their decedent’s – Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, Johnny Cash and all that.
I however, felt Spud-Nigger to be a far more fitting term for the GAA-loving culchie bog-merchants, than any form of Yank-flavoured Protestant Henry’d care to mention.
******
Carroll was a drinker who ploughed around town talking about Mohammad Ali in various different establishments. A big thick mountain-man with a grey beard, he’d been a forester all his life. He was mid-sixties now though, had had a few strokes and some heart problems lately.
I remember’d him as a child, big strong grizzly fucker but never in bad humour. Local legend was he was the best in the business; he could drop a tree and make it land exactly wherever he wanted, down to the inch. He’d worked half his life as the chief woodsman for the Earl up in the Castle. Even back then he was hardcore on the liquor.
But the drink had aged him, and now sometimes you’d see him on a stick. He’d snarl at you jokingly and ask if you’d ever gotten a box, as if he was offering his services. But even on the stick I wouldn’t have fancied a slap from him, the grizzly old fucker.
Carroll never married; he sluiced down the liquor in the style of a man with demons. But Carroll had a heart like nobody alive. He’d give you his last fiver if he thought you were stuck. He’d invite you into his sparse little cottage down back lane to drink cans and smoke rollies – he was mad for the chat. Always telling stories about his antics as a younger man, and by the deep lines on his face you’d believe every one of them.
He’d little bottles of spirits placed at various locations on windowsills and on top of piles of turf all around the kitchen like the Stations of the Cross, as if ready for any emergency situation. He never had much cash, spent all his pension in the pub on porter and whiskey, and whatever was left went on a few loaves of bread. Whole loaves and never sliced pans.
But behind Carroll’s bravado was a quiet sense of loneliness, almost mournful the way he’d look into the distance when recalling a story. He often lamented the fact he never married, said he’d come close a couple of times but in the end was too wild a creature to ever attempt tame. But he wondered all the same how different life would have been for him, if he had been tamed.
He’d had a particular fondness for writing-off cars while steamed drunk back in the day, but then making it all disappear and escaping repercussion. It was more than a science; he’d it down to an art form. Then there were the stories about the brawls and the boozing, and the general mayhem that seemed to surround the man when he was out on the sauce.
The Other Lad and myself used to go into his cottage with a few cans and listen to his stories every now and then. Then sometimes we’d meet him out in the pub and drink pints with him. We never talked about it, but we both saw ourselves in Carroll, if things didn’t go to plan. A grim vision of the future we daren’t even mention.
So I see Carroll in the Square as I’m heading up to the house. About six in the evening and he out since the breakfast, standing in the porch outside the hotel bar, smoking a rollie with the big grizzly beard on him. So I walked over to him, and he asks me as usual if I’d ever gotten a box. He’d curl one side of his mouth up when he enquired, the big menacing head, all part of the act. Sometimes he’d hit you a playful thump in the chest, if he wasn’t on the stick. So I ask him if he wants to come across the road for a pint, and he only delighted. He asks have I seen The Other Lad recently, I said I had and I gave him a call.
Half an hour later and the three of us are on round two across the road. The main thing that made Carroll stand out from any other yarn-dealing drunk was you never heard the same story twice. There was always fresh information presented; another piece of the jigsaw, another fragment of this untamed life.
After a couple of hours Carroll said he was going home. He’d been out since the morning and said he wanted to sleep. As he’s getting up to leave he starts laughing and tells myself and The Other Lad we’re two dangerous fuckers.
*****
When the century had been even younger the town was full of Polskis, working all hours in the factories and on sites. At one point the town had more Polskis than Protestants. But now the factories were all closed and the building-sites ghost-estates, so half the Polskis went back home and started their own housing boom with all their hard-earned Spud-Nigger Euros. The Protestants stayed put.
But the Polskis fitted in with the Spud-Niggers no problem. The big Catholic heads on them, mass attendance grew to the point where they even had a mass in Polski once a week. They too liked the liquor, but in a slightly different style.
The Polskis rounded vowels stuck out among the flat Irish Midlands drone. If you heard them without seeing them it was always hard to work out whether they were from Cork or Poland for the first few seconds of a conversation. The minute you got a visual though, you were left in no doubt.
They were just harder than the Spud-Niggers. Tougher people all round. And if you’ve ever done a winter in Poland you’ll understand why. But this toughness extended to the way they drank; it was all shots and hard liquor rather than slow pints and shite-talk – the preference of the Spud-Nigger.
They’d spend hours in the gym pushing around ridiculous weights and injecting steroids in the toilets. Twenty stone of muscle and pure thickness in every sense of the word.
So they worked like dogs, trained like horses, and then drank like fish. They were hardcore in everything they did. The Spud-Niggers were begrudgingly impressed by the sheer severity and absolute single-mindedness of the latest arrivals. They were here to work and weren’t afraid of the scald either.
Nostradamus said the world was on the way out once we got a black Pope. Although Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana was an early front runner, we dodged that domesday bullet. But if Nostradamus was of any use, he would’ve spotted far more pressing issues concerning his whole ‘End of the World’ obsession.
He didn’t mention that meteorite hitting Russia, and the flakey prick had nothing to say about horse-burgers either. But I’m fairly sure he’d have choked on his diet-seven-up if he’d envisaged the rise of Cash For Gold.
Suddenly they’re everywhere. Pink neon signs promising instant riches. Popping up all over the place in between pubs and pharmacies – with all the class of a scratch-card renting a shop. Inhabited by middle-aged men behind counters under tube lights, assuring you it’s okay to sell your dead granny’s necklace. Smiling all the way to the smelt-down….
And it’s no wonder they’re smiling. The price of gold is going only one way – up. Forty years ago an ounce of gold cost you €35. It crept up slowly over the years, but stayed around the €350 an ounce mark for decades. Today an ounce of gold will set you back €1600.
To sell this smiling man that gold to get that cash, all you need is a dodgy story and some half-arsed documentation. I went into a Cash For Gold during the week with a fabricated dead granny and a fake dose of inheritance.
Deep-vein thrombosis. Very sad it was. We all warned her against that Beyonce gig; far too long on a plane for a woman of her age. Good turn out at the funeral though. Lovely sandwiches and plenty of Protestant Whiskey.
The smiling man told me to bring in my inheritance, he’d have a gawk, and based on the merchandise he’d give me cash, on the spot, there and then. He showed me a form that looked like it’d been knocked up on a photocopier five minutes earlier, and told me I’d just have to sign a few autographs and show some I.D. A credit-card would suffice – no need for photo I.D. Just a card with a name on it….
Pure handy. So when you’re in the back of the van – armed with a wheel-brace and a balaclava – ready to loot some culchies house you’ve been scoping out all week, remember to grab the aul’ wans credit cards too. They’ll be in there with the jewellery somewhere; they don’t take Mastercard at bingo, and you’ve plenty of time ’cause her house is the last stop on the bingo bus. I.D. problem sorted….
A friend of mines mother was recently relieved of €40,000 worth of her lifetime collection of jewellery from a drawer in her bedroom. She was in her kitchen at the time. After forcing the bedroom window, the thieves locked the bedroom door from the inside, then made their escape back out the same bedroom window. While she was making her dinner in the kitchen.
Another pair of thieves weren’t so lucky. After day-tripping in the van down the country from The Big Smoke, they were all set for some casual culchie looting. But it didn’t go quite so smoothly….
Using the same M.O., they targeted an older woman in a rural location. Fortunately for the woman, her two big farmer sons caught the thieves in the act. Unfortunately for the thieves, it took the cops a while to get to them. Battered and bruised, they had to be helped into the squad-car – lets just say they wouldn’t have made great hurlers.
At present, Kerry has the lowest incidence of reported burglaries in Ireland, with just one break-in for every 571 residents – less than half the current national average. Yet a stroll through Tralee these days is like a bad day in Butlins. Pink neon signs and tube lights everywhere, Cash For Gold seems to be driving the whole economy. But yet they have the lowest reported break-ins….
So perhaps that’s proof that the rise of Cash For Gold is a genuine symptom of the economic state of the nation. Maybe the sheer volume of pink neon and tube lighting is a direct result of struggling people forced to sell their valuables legitimately to put food on the table.
Or maybe the boys with the balaclavas just put extra diesel in the van and carry-on driving once they’ve finished looting the aul’ wans of the Midlands, and fence the goods in parts further south….
Either way, Nostradamus didn’t see this one coming.
Dark lumps of dirty old chewing gum stick to footpaths on every single street. Aul’ wans bitch and moan; local councillors have conniptions with biscuits in damp community halls. But the gum remains stuck to the path.
I’ve done it myself. I bought the gum all nicely packaged and wrapped, smelled the lovely minty fresh through the foil. I shoved it in my gob for about four and a half minutes. Then something terrible happened – the flavour disappeared completely. No more minty fresh, just a piece of rubber in my mouth. Nasty.
It’s at this point logic kicks in, when you realise there’s no point accommodating flavourless rubber in your mouth. Particularly flavourless rubber you’re not even going to swallow. Civilised conscientious members of society find a bin. Civilised conscientious member of society that can’t find a fucking bin, hock it out onto the street.
I couldn’t find a bin, and I wasn’t putting it in my pocket. You’d get chewing gum all over your heroin, and then you’d have real problems. So I spat it out onto the street, allowing it to go play with the orchestra of other sticky shit singing on the street.
Hardly a crime that merits being dragged through the streets tied to the back of a pick-up truck, but still not exactly civic-award winning territory either.
But because I am a civilised member of society (and constantly looking for awards), I console myself that I’m actually performing an essential civic duty. I’m giving that councillor something to rant about at a meeting on a Wednesday night in a cold community hall. I’m keeping him warm with panic and self-importance.
The poor fucker’s already wearing two pairs of socks – to combat the draught – and has emergency tea-bags stashed in his pockets since he watched Argo with the wife and Affleck gave him The Fear. Anything could happen at an urban council meeting – the shit could go south and the Canadians could be called. So as far as I’m concerned I’m just being sound to this political powerhouse – so no need to put petrol in the pick-up truck just yet please.
But even though the minty flavour disappears after four minutes – forcing me to spit on the street like the tramp I am – I’ll still buy that packaged promise of minty fresh all over again tomorrow. Why? Because I’m an awful eejit.
Fianna Fail topped the opinion polls at the weekend. This is the political party we blame for the worst recession in our history. The political party that gave birth to a cat, fed it with pints and property ’til it grew into a tiger, and called it a Celt. Then the tiger got AIDS and that was the end of that. Cat-AIDS, the phrase Amy Winehouse famously coined. She knew all along – maybe that’s what sent her over the edge.
Now 200 Irish people emigrate every day, and they are not coming back. Not since the famine has this country experienced such a mass exodus. We all blamed Fianna Fail. They were far from minty fresh, so we spat them out.
We went to the ballots and we decimated them as a political party. We hooked them up to the back of the pick-up truck and dragged them through the streets. But now they’re back up on top. Only four and a half minutes later…..minty fucking fresh.
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