With this particular journey I well and truly went in off the black - I opted for the 9 o’clock bus thinking that most commuters would be in work by then, the bus would be near empty and the roads would clear. Seeing only a handful of passengers I figured my choice was a good one. Good man, Sneezy, says I, fair play to ya. The driver looked at me over his glasses.

The reason for so few passengers became apparent when the bus pulled off the N7 into Citywest and meandered through Jobstown, The Square and Belgard before rejoining the N7 at Newlands. And extra half hour added to the trip. Ya blitherin’ gobshite, Sneezy, says I, you would take the one and only fekin bus that goes the unscenic route wouldn’t ya. The driver looked at me over his glasses.

I called ahead to say I’d be late. We took a wrong turn. A what … how the fek could … where? Ah look, I’ll explain later.

A couple with two small children began to panic - would they make the airport by 10:30? Not a hope, said the driver over his glasses, it’ll be that by the time we connect with the Heuston-Airport feeder. The man turned white as the Klan. We moved barely 100m in the next five minutes. Even 10:30 for Heuston wasn’t looking doable.

The driver got on his phone and called a few of his taxi driver mates over his glasses. None were nearby.

Near Bluebell he hopped out and ran to an empty cab. Free? Ya free? Fare to the airport for ya. Pull in over there. I’ll block the way and let you back out. And don’t fuck them over on the fare.

He bullied the bus across the lanes blocking the traffic and the taxi made an illegal u-turn and sped off back toward the motorway. I reckon they’ll make it, he said over his glasses.

That morning I was in a bookbinders, a pharmacy, the Olympia theatre, the Central Bank, Bus Áras, a newsagents, a camera store and a hospital. In all bar the hospital I got the same level of helpful service the driver had given that family (not that I ever expected more than grunts from the HSE jobsworths anyway). It made up for arduous journey somewhat.

They made the airport, said the same driver over his glasses on the return trip. Oh it’s yourself. How do ya know? I called the number on the taxi when I got back to base. I could’ve been sacked for blocking the road like that - I’d hate to think it was all for nothing.

Mick: Nice one. Listen, would you get me 200 fags and a bottle of brandy. I’ll give you the money when you get back.

Two weeks later …

Paddy: There you go. 200 B&H and a bottle of Hennessy.

Mick: Good man. Fair play to ya. What do I owe ya?

Paddy: €106.50.

Mick: Oh suffering jayzez, that’s fierce dear. Where the hell were ya?

Paddy: Wexford.

I won’t forget.
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So what day is it ye’re are going to Galway?

There you go again - Galway. We ARE NOT going to Galway. How many times do I have to tell you we are going to Clare? You keep saying Galway. You keep telling people that. You told Mary we were going to Galway and now she’s gone and booked a B&B in Clifden thinking she can meet up with us at the weekend. And you told those people selling the car that we’d be passing through Athlone and would have a look on the way home. And you told my mother-in-law and she gave us a voucher for the shopping centre in Eyre Square. And you told Frank and his wife arrived with a stack of tourist brochures about Galway.

Get it right for fek sake: NOT GALWAY! WE ARE GOING TO CLARE! CLARE! CLARE! CLARE!
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Would you not go to Galway? It would avoid all this confusion ye’re causing.

This isn’t mine.

Are you sure?

Yeah, I’m sure. It’s Morris Harney’s pension cheque from Roadstone.

You opened it?

No I didn’t. It says “Roadstone - Pensions Department” on it.

So how come you have it?

You gave it to me!

You’d say anything to get me in trouble. And I suppose you want me to deliver it for you now?

Yes and yes.

Anything else you want me to do, not that me heart isn’t scalded with work as it is?

Just see if there are any cheques for me in with the Harneys’ pile.

How will I know them?

They have a small black dog and an ‘06 Mazda.

Not the Harneys - the cheques!

They’ll have my name on them.

A large area has been cleared and graded off, ready for the bouncy slug/train/whatever and some fancy concert-like fake grass will be rolled out so the kids don’t get mired in the mud.

The only problem was a large hole, originally dug for another purpose^[1], had filled with water. It should really have been pumped out but without the equipment the only option was to fill it in and hope for the best. The best didn’t turn out great. It’s a mess. A soaking wet muddy mess. (If anyone needs livery for a water buffalo, contact me.)

Cap in hand, I went to explain:

- How bad is it? I’m afraid to look.

- Well, kids below the age of 8 would probably be swallowed up. And older ones with growth deficiences.

- Okay. Let me check the guest list. Dum dee dum dee dum … Not good - we’re looking at a loss of 24.7% of invited offspring.

- If I fenced it off I could probably get that down under 10%. You’ll always get a few breakers. Would that do?

- Maybe. Though a 100% survial rate would be better. Parents get touchy.

- Right let’s look at the list again.

- Well, there’s the Galberstowns^[2] - those lads are pansies. They’ll run a mile from the sight of mud. Safe there.

- What about the Carlows?

- They’re old enough to have sense. And they can keep the smaller ones away. Now the Kilcocks - they aren’t the brightest - they’ll be first to fall in.

- The Carlows can pull them out if I leave some rope handy.

- Yeah. Do that. Now let’s see. The Timolins are born breakers. They’ll just have to go where they’re told not to.

- So we lose the Timolins. If it’s just them we’re not too bad.

- No. This isn’t as bad as I thought. We can’t do anything about the Saggarts - if there wasn’t a swamp they’d make one and jump into it. I think it’ll be okay.

- Grand so. I fence it off, leave a rescue rope and handcuff the Timolins to the gate.

- Yeah. Sorted.

[1] Apparently the County Council insist you buy a graveyard plot from them.

[2] With extended families where most have the same surname it’s normal to avoid confusion by referring to them by where they live, such as the Cork Kellys, Naas Kellys, Navan Kellys and so on. Our clan, being abnormal, dispense with the surname altogether.

Would I like to help with the preparations? Help meaning receive a long list of tasks and complete them in half the time allotted … because there’ll be more. Oh, and like to meaning say no and your life will be a misery - all your camels will have calves of the same sex and that kind of thing.

First up, the invitations. I thought long and hard about how to go about designing cards for a party that was to be both a wedding anniversary and a house warming. Then suddenly - ding! I took my dinner out of the microwave and it came to me - superimpose a shot from the wedding onto one of the new front door.

They arrived two days later. Well, what ya think? Fekin deadly - it looks like the two of us are standing right in the doorway. One foot inside, one outside. I’m good, huh. Yeah … but, hold on. Ah for the love of jayzez what’s this “10 years since we got married up” bit? I thought “wed” sounded soppy so I changed it. Marriage is supposed to be soppy. Only the first few years though. Oh crap! They’ll have to do - there’s no time to reprint.

A few days went by and my camels all gave birth to males.

Get your car out and we’ll go buy the drink. The trolley creaked under the weight. If the arse fell out of it, the fire brigade would have to pump out the shop. Oh look. A pack of party hats and bendy straws. The kids will love these. I swear I could hear the trolley moan. These could be the hats that broke the trolley’s back.

Having a party I see, said the checkout girl. I glanced up. Well spotted. Coped the party hats then eh? She looked at me a long time, her hand hovering over the big-guy-with-a-peaked-cap-and-a-radio button. Yeah, that’s it. Party hats are always the giveaway.

With the booze in the boot and the bonnet pointing skywards, I tacked the car toward the exit. Take a left out the gate. We’re going to view a big caterpillar. I seen it on a website and rang the man to say we’d come look. A what? A caterpillar. A big long yoke that you blow up. For the kids. They play inside it. You put a bunch of kids in it then blow it up? Cool! No. You blow it up first then the kids play around in the blood and guts.

It was left to me to deal with the caterpillar guy while a we’d-love-to-come phonecall was taken from one of the I-hope-to-fcuk-they-say-no relations.

Howya getting on? I’m here to see the big slug thing. He hesitated. Sorry? It’s a big long yoke that kids play inside. It’s on the website. Ah, yes, I have you now, he smiled. It’s a bad picture on that. It’s actually a train. It’s over here. Come and have a look.

Well? So what do you think?

The door is very narrow. The windows are even smaller. What happens if a row breaks out? How are we supposed to get in to take out the wounded?

He looked at me even longer and even more strangely than the checkout girl.

Look, no worries, I consoled him. I can borrow a metal detector and scan all the kids coming in the gate for knives. I looked skyward and muttered, I should have done that the last time.

So what’s the caterpillar like? It’s actually a train. But it’s grand. I told the man you’d hire it. He wants a deposit of two grand, refundable if he gets it back undamaged, and you’ll have to sign a form saying he’s not liable for any injuries. Or deaths. Deaths?!?!? And two is a bit steep. Yeah, I thought that myself. Can’t for the life of me figure out why it’s so much.

Mags came by. We loved Mags. A complete and utter fruit cake. Plus she was four years older and working for a fruit importer which meant she always had money (and free fruit). She treated us all to a third one (welcome indeed) and better still her folks were away, she had her dad’s Escort Estate and would drive us home (even more welcome). The only snag was with so many of us someone would have to travel in the boot. Me!

Mags went a bit wide at a Y-junction and the car spun on the gravel sending it sideways across the road. It clipped a telephone pole and dropped tail first into a ditch. The door of the boot had shot open and I had been slung out.

Someone shouted to call an ambulance and two of us ran off in search of a phone. We scanned the wires overhead at each house until we found one that had a phone. This was 1983 and mobiles weren’t invented and many homes didn’t even have a landline.

The ambulance took Mags and one of the guys and the rest of us followed with the man whose phone we’d used.

She had knocked her head on the steering wheel an was bleeding badly and concussed. Two of the lads had broken an arm. The others had minor cuts and sprains. I was the last to be looked at. And what ails you? asked the doctor. I got stung by nettles and had a kiwi fruit squashed into my back. In his opinion I didn’t have need of his medical skills though he did take the time to enquire about kiwi fruit. This was 1983. Exotic fruits had just been invented and were even less common than landlines.

In the early hours of the following morning were allowed see Mags. She was fine but they would keep her under observation for a while longer. Could someone please, please, please get the car out of the ditch before the neighbours see it? She would face her parents when they got home. Guess who was volunteered? Me!

At 7 I set off with my neighbour in his tractor armed a strong chain. We came across a pile of boxes scattered over the road. Cartons of salt, cornflour, sugar, tea, polish, cleaning sprays, all manner of goods that had fallen of a truck heading for the nearby warehouse. We put everything into the front loader. This job would pay for itself.

I knocked on a door and explained to an elderly lady about the crash and asked could we tow the car into her yard. It’ll only be here for a week until the girl’s folks get home. They’ll take it away then. She wasn’t convinced. The last time a crashed car was put in here they never came back for it, she said pointing out a pile of rust in the garden. It was an IO reg - that’ll tell you how old it was.

Do you drink tea? Do you take sugar? Would you use some lavender polish? So we paid for parking with trucksam and left.

A few eyebrows were raised when the tractor drove in the monastery gates and up the avenue. Would you care to enlighten me as to your chosen mode of conveyance, Mr. Sneeze? You don’ want to know, Brother. I see. I should know better than to ask - you do get yourself into some strange situations. Well here are your results. Well done. Thanks, Boss. I mean, Brother. Hey, do ya want some cornflour? He didn’t.

At the hospital, Mags asked if I was there to bring her home. Jayzez, I can’t Mags, sorry. We’ve no room. The front loader’s full of salt and stuff.

That night we met at the hotel again. Casts were signed. Stitches counted and admired. I showed off the exact spot on my back that the kiwi had been squashed. As you’d expect, the results were mentioned. How did I do? I didn’t know. In all the excitement I never opened the envelope. It was at home, in a box, wedged between bottles of Jif.

· Practising reading upside down I see, Sneezy.
· Drunk again, Peadar?
· No harm in that, Sneezy. Shur I had a few meself.*
· I guessed that.
· You know, just one pint a day can save the life of a starving child in Africa.
· Really?
· Oh yes. The biggest Guinness brewery of all is in Nigeria. There’d be no work without it and the people wouldn’t be able to feed their families.
· But we don’t get our porter from over there. Ours comes from Dublin.
· See? Even better. We’re not just helping hungry kids, we’re reducing our carbon footsteps. Anyway, there’s loads of Nigerians in Dublin too.
· So during the recession our CO₂ emissions will rise?
· Through the roof, Sneezy. Through the roof. We’ll be choking we will.
· So the government should be encouraging people to drink?
· It’d be good for the environment and mean spending less on aid to Africa too.
· This place seems to be doing its bit. Busy enough. He has a sign in the window looking for part-time staff.
· He should be doing more - he should be looking for customers.

I made a phone call. Listed the fonts; styles; positioning; size. Within minutes I had second poster in the window, exactly matching the other in look and feel, except this one said “Full-time Customers Wanted”.

Peadar and I were very pleased with our work. The owner wasn’t and we’re both barred. Sometimes no matter what you try do to save the environment and feed the hungry, big business will block you.

* 2^nd oldest joke in Ireland. The 1^st is so old, I can’t remember it.

Head of the RSA, Noel Brett, said among the problems identified is that a 16-year-old can drive a tractor and trailer weighing more than 30 tonnes without a driving test and he was concerned that the vehicles themselves are not officially checked for road-worthiness.

What bolt of inspirational lightening struck Mr. Brett to prompt him question the suitability of archaic legislation in today’s world? Had he been en-route to a holiday resort in Damascus when suddenly he felt compelled to rush back to base, losing his deposit, and tell everyone there was something wrong? Fek it, lads, I’ve just realised these laws are so old, God could have legally driven a tractor when he was in short trousers.

The press release ended with a link to the RSA website from were the document could be downloaded. That I couldn’t locate it on the site for days didn’t surprise me - the RSA, like all State quangos, commonly adopt (to use an agricultural term) a cart before the horse approach.

It appeared a few days later, though was still difficult to find and the inclusion of so many paragraphs of statutory regulations made it not unlike the Lisbon Treaty on both counts.

A child could tell you it is wrong for a child to be driving a high powered vehicle on a public road. A child, seeing a tractor pulling a 30 tonne load hurtle toward it at 40km/h might cry out mammy, mammy, will it stop? That is clear. So what is the fuss about? What is really behind this proposed legislation discussion document?

A lot. A heck of a lot in fact.

Why do Irish farmers use, or appear to use, the public roads more frequently that their European counterparts? Historically, Irish farms were small for a number of reasons that I won’t bore you with here. To enlarge a farm meant purchasing more land, obviously, but the likelihood of securing adjacent holdings was slim. Farms became disjointed parcels. Land swaps, championed by Mary Coughlan during her time as Minister for Agriculture, designed to avoid the purchase and sales taxes, proved unworkable in the main. Bottom line: To get their work done, farmers have to use the public roads. Drawing comparisons with the UK, as the RSA do, is not comparing like with like (and is one of my pet hates).

It is patently obvious that agricultural contractors must use the roads to get to and from the numerous farms they work on and to haul produce (silage, grain etc.).

Infrastructure improvements in recent times has resulted in the construction of new roads with little or no provision made for agricultural traffic - new one opened, old one closed. Upgraded roads resulted in increased traffic volumes and speeds. The number of farmers using these routes has not increased but the number of motorists seeing them has, leading to a perception it has.

The use of farm tractors by the construction industry has distorted this further. Not only are they perfectly suited to the rugged terrain of building sites but they are capable of relatively high road-speeds - the MB-trac which ceased production in ‘91 had a rating of 40km/h but with some mechanical know how could be cranked up to 65km/h. 50km/h is the standard in today’s mid- to high-range tractors and the horsepower is sufficient to pull loads that articulated trucks do.

But the big bonus is they can be registered as works vehicles. This means far lower tax, insurance and more importantly, they can be run cheaply on rebated fuel (green diesel). Who can blame them? The cost savings are enormous.

Seeing what the builders were doing, some farmers and agricultural contractors began using their machinery in the off-season to transport construction materials and supplies. Who can blame them? The more hours an expensive machine can be worked the sooner it pays for itself.

It is the pseudo-farm tractors that the road users encounter most and that made the small child cry out.

The most crying is being done by another group - the road hauliers. They are required to be licensed, to pay higher tax and insurance, to use non-rebated fuel (white/road diesel), to equip their trucks with tachographs, to employ drivers with higher standard driving licenses, and so on. Who would blame them crying? They are the ones losing out most.

They are also a very strong lobby group. Is the RSA pandering to a strong group financially disadvantaged in this instance? Is the Road Safety Authority really concerned with a safety issue at all or is there political manoeuvring afoot? Let the hauliers have their way with this and they’ll give in on something else the RSA want implemented.

It is the safety aspect that is puzzling me:

- When founded in 2006, one of the RSA’s first projects was to review all legislation as pertaining to road safety. Aborted holiday in Damascus aside, how come they are only realising now about the issue of 16-year-olds driving tractors on the public roads on learner permits? Did it not occur to them during the revamping of the rules-of-the-road booklet?

- If the road-worthiness of agricultural vehicles is of such concern (and the farmers agree it is) why not also be concerned that road haulage vehicles are, for all intents and purposes, self-certified for road-worthiness? Any garage, or indeed, haulier, can be licensed to certify vehicles.

- Is a slow-moving vehicle on the public a hazard? The RSA say it has concerns about tailbacks caused by tractors on public roads but has no suggestion for how to address this. What are they really saying here? Is it that, yes, fatal and non-fatal collisions do happen, but the fault lies generally not with the tractor driver but with the absolutely horrendous driving standards of motorists? But they can’t say that. That would be admitting that 99% of Irish motorists, let’s face it, couldn’t drive a lawnmower never mind a car. Rather than forcing drivers to be alert to potential hazards it is easier to remove the hazard. No suggestion for how to address this is a prompt to the public to call for a tractor-ban.

- Are they concerned about a slow-moving digger or other works machine? The discussion document states the following: As they generally do not carry goods or pull a trailer, they do not give rise to any competitive issues in relation to road haulage however there are road safety issues to be considered. Note their concern for the haulage industry. Since when are competitive issues the concern of a safety authority?

Answer the fekin thing … answer the fekin thing … answer the fekin thing goes The Sneeze.

Bzzz … bzzz … bzzz … bzzz … bzzz goes the phone. Bzzz … bzzz …

Department of Vegetation, good morning goes the woman in her I’m-not-a-civil-servant voice.

‘Morning. I’d like to speak with someone about panda trees, please.

I’m sorry, the person who normally handles that is out today.

Can someone else help me?

Well, there’s no one here today that can really. The bank holiday and that.

The bank holiday weekend begins tomorrow, Saturday. Today is Friday. Ah here, can I assume someone will be there on Tuesday?

I’m off Tuesday instead of today so I can’t ask someone to call you then. I’ll leave a note but it might be best if you rang again.

Any chance you’d work 3% of Tuesday?

Sorry?

It’s okay. I didn’t expect you to have a bamboo what I’m saying.

Clink goes the Sneeze’s phone.

Via Gayé: