It Happens Between Stops

by Mattie Lennon

  “Well I guess we’re going to be famous from now on,” Mike said smiling.

  “Yeah, looks like it. But I think next time we have to go to a military reunion we had better drive. I don’t fancy being train-jacked again. At least this sort of mayhem would be less likely to happen,” John said as he cleaned the chamber of his Magnum 45.

  AUTUMN DAY

  Cathy Hickey

  THE BUS IS FOR US

  Declan Gowran

  It’s Car Free day in Dublin and the buses are packed. Or should that read Bus Free day as Dublin Bus reclaims the streets? There’s a little magic in the air and colour and pageantry as it is also the All-Ireland Football Finals day and the city is a tapestry of movement breathing an excited air of expectancy.

  “It’s your bus…..so are you still going to use it after all the fuss has died down, and it’s no longer free?”

  That is the question and such was the theme of the Tapestry EU initiative conducted among schoolchildren in the Coolock area recently. One of the slogans dreamt up by an inspired student provides the heading for this piece and an innovative advertisement displayed on the side of the number 27 bus.

  In many ways children are among the wisest, cutest and sometimes the most cruel people in the world. Children invariably speak from the hip when they shoot their mouths off with a passion, and they say things as they see them. Their vision too can be inspiring as evidenced by the posters and poems submitted for the Tapestry competition. Fact is that every child who took part was a winner; but it was Dublin Bus that benefited most from the children’s unstinting efforts and ideas.

  Praise to all the children who took part and special praise should go to Peter Scott, Quality and Commercial Manager, Gerry Charles, Worker Director and local Clontarf workers’ representative, and to Michael Mathews, Operations Manager, who took time out to become the real face of Dublin Bus when he presented the awards to the obviously delighted winners, in helping to organise and fulfil a wonderful scheme of customer involvement.

  For many years Dublin Bus has visited junior schools in the Dublin area to familiarise young people with the ethos of the bus as a vital cog in the machinery of everyday life. It served to illustrate the importance of the bus in everyday life and why vehicles and crews should be treated with the respect and safety that such a vital service deserves. The former and the newer bus commercials devised under the auspices of Bronagh Rooney as Marketing Manager serve to develop this theme in the most potent of ways through the medium of television where the human face of Dublin Bus comes to life as ordinary staff are seen performing their duties. People as passengers appreciate that staff in Dublin Bus do a professional job often under trying conditions and the majority are willing to give the company a chance despite upsets caused by traffic. The staff itself is always willing to cover manpower shortages or give their services to special events and shuttles as witnessed at Slane and the recent Family Day in the Phoenix Park. In that regard it would be futile and inflammatory for the Government of the day to even contemplate the breaking-up or the privatising of what has become in later years a most efficient Dublin Bus company. Diversification can lead to chaos. Children especially recognise this. Signs are so important to them as well as logos. The bus they catch to school should always be recognisable too with an invariably friendly driver at the wheel. We all have our moments, and children will be children, sometimes noisy and rough and ready. But we were all children once and most respond favourably to a firm but friendly command.

  Children like to be treated as equals. Children are clever and can see through fabrication.

  In this way the Tapestry initiative has been so important and enlightening. Put it this way: ‘We have all grown up a bit, even Dublin Bus’. We have shown that we care for our children’s opinions and they have responded in such a magnificent way. We have learned so much more now about each other that we can progress onto further plateaux of excellence.

  Hopefully the old spates of window smashing by stone throwing children will become a bad memory of the past for now after all if the throwers cast their stones they will only be defacing the efforts of their peers and schoolmates and that would be simply unforgiveable.

  The tapestry advertisements on the side of the 27 bus are a testament to the future success of community partnership and Dublin Bus. Despite accusations of inefficiency and an uncaring nature Dublin Bus has always liaised with its public, and has done so admirably with this Tapestry initiative. It’s always great to have an idea for improvement; but it is so more important to put ideas into practice. That’s how the world moves on.

  Wisdom is such a great attribute in a person, even more so in a public company. In children Dublin Bus recognises its customers of the future and knows they should be involved in transport development, their ideas nurtured, analysed and acted upon in order to provide an even better quality bus service. In turn it shouldn’t surprise anybody that from this Tapestry initiative some super advertisement and marketing executives of the future will be driven in their chosen careers, and yes, maybe even a bus driver or two.

  BLOOMSDAY

  Ronnie Hickey

  THE BOOK WARM

  Scotty Sturgeon

  I’m a bookworm. You see me everywhere, in the theatre, reading the play at the interval, in the park huddled over a digest, and if you peep over my shoulder in the bus you will see me devouring the editorials. My favourite haunt is the local library and even though you see me do not expect me to recognise you, for I am far away in dim horizons cleaving my way through the Amazon jungle, or maybe intent on ‘who done it.’

  Books are my friends and faithful companions. There’s always one with me, naturally I like some better than others, and each day the circle widens. Practically every sphere of knowledge comes within my orbit, travel, science, fiction, philosophy, anthropology and in fact every ology you can think of. I understand people because I am always reading about them, psychology is a fascinating hobby, pin-point the various neuroses that affect mankind, and then look for them in your friends. Sometimes I think there is not one completely normal person alive.

  I have been everywhere, met all the famous people who ever lived, enjoyed their thoughts, seen the marvels of science, the discoveries of medicine and the pomp and pageantry of history.

  I was with Cleopatra as she sailed down the Nile to meet Anthony. I laughed with Nero at the burning of Rome, and heard the mighty Coliseum resound to the yells of the blood thirsty rabble. I followed the Greeks to Troy, I watched the pagan fires die out over Europe and its cathedrals rise to the skies.

  I visited the four corners of the world, I crossed the Atlantic with Columbus, I was with Livingstone in Africa, and Scott at the South Pole. I saw the blood-drenched altars of the Incas,

  Marie Antoinette ascending to the guillotine, I was present at the Gettysburg address, the attack on Pearl Harbour and saw the atom bomb descending on Hiroshima, witnessed famines and wars in every corner of the world. I have won and lost elections, played in every major sporting event imaginable.

  The music of words infected me and I was swept along by them into the fantastic lands of poetry. What one of you have not succumbed to the beauty of Omar Khayyam’s verse, enjoy life he says; forget the past and live only for the present; the pursuit of knowledge is futile, profit by the example of bygone sages as ‘their words to scorn are scattered, and their mouths are stopt with dust.’

  They say books are only a reflection of life that they should serve as an example to a better concept of living. But books are not the background of my life, they are my life, and occasionally I wonder if I am missing something. I read mostly about people, and how they served the society in which they lived. A book, a chair by the fireside and imagination peeping over my shoulder is all I ask, but I cannot prevent these uneasy thoughts bubbling in my mind.

  What will the recording Angel write about me in the book of life? Will he accept a list of the books I have read, or will he question my deeds? There’s th
at parable of the Ten Talents and the man who buried his talents in the earth….

  That’s the worst of reading, it always sets you thinking.

  THE GERIATRIC WARD

  Thomas Carroll

  The geriatric ward in Mount Temple Hospital was no different to any other geriatric ward you are likely to find in any other hospital. The patients were on their last legs, just waiting for life to run out. Sam Smith was one of the oldest patients in the ward. He was seventy-seven and if truth be told, he didn’t feel like giving up on life just yet. Sam had spent his life in the army; always wanted to get into the SAS. Had it not been for stomach trouble and his tendency to make extremely loud farts, well who knows? He might have been another Andy McNabb perhaps. But then life doesn’t always deal out the cards that make everything go to plan. He got an office job and became personal secretary to a high ranking colonel. Sam liked this work; at least it meant that he got home every night to be with his wife and their two children, Sophie and Peter.

  What the other people in the ward didn’t know was that Sam had an ability to perform magic. Not just cheap skate hocuspocus stuff, but real serious disappearing type magic. Sam always carefully chose his time to use this magic so that nobody would ever suspect him. He didn’t want to be labelled a freak or the next David Blaine. You see Sam knew he was never going to die. About twenty years ago he began to develop a special potion that would prevent him from ever going beyond the age of seventy-seven. This ‘live forever potion’ had to be drunk once a week so that the body and mind would be prevented from ageing. The only trouble now was that Sam would have to get to his flat at the other side of the city so that he could make the potion. Getting out of Mount Temple geriatric ward was no easy matter. He was going to have to get hold of a doctor’s surgery coat or some disguise so as to escape.

  Sam arrived at his flat and with the utmost speed set about preparing the ‘live forever potion’. He mixed the ingredients in a big cooking bowl and placed this in the oven to cook for three hours. The smell alone is pretty strong; luckily the extractor fan takes care of this. When the stuff was cooked Sam allows it to cool before eating half of the substance. It looked like a big cake, but it certainly didn’t taste like cake, more like sea weed. How he was ever going to get one of the other patients to eat this stuff was going to be a real challenge. He would have to sweeten the ingredients with honey and use vanilla flavouring to subdue the overpowering smell – a smell that was not unlike cat’s urine along with salty sea water!

  When Jim Richards bit into his dinner that day little did he realise that the contents had been deliberately invested with ‘live forever potion’. The fact that his dinner was slightly sweeter than usual didn’t cause him undue concern; in fact the sweet taste was a change from the bland food that was usually served. Even his tea tasted slightly sweeter. Jim was seventy-one and one day soon he would thank Sam most graciously for the gift of eternal life he was now secretly bestowing upon him even if it was going to give Jim the heaviest bout of diarrhoea he would ever experience in his long life.

  BOOTSIE

  Declan Gowran

  You know what they say about men with big feet? They have to get their shoes specially made by the cobbler. Made to measure from toes to heels to insteps to ankles with the appropriate allowances made for the type of sock to be worn. This factor of course would also depend on the seasons and whether the wearer’s feet were prone to sweating. Style might also enter the equation; but at the time that I’m going to talk about, the good old- fashioned leather brogues were the boots to be seen in. These brogues were all leather tops, soles and heels with indented patterns and overlapping strips that suggested a sturdy bulkiness that would suit the cobbles of the farmyard or the polished floor of the Ceili House.

  The only trouble was it was expensive to have your own shoes made especially if you happened to be a bus driver back in the Hungry Sixties.

  During the Sixties the first OMO buses were introduced. These were One Man Operated and came with a premium of an extra 20% over and above the basic wages of the day. Some new routes like Coolock started off as single-deck OMO operated services while others like the North Wall were developed. Because of the extra wages involved the more senior of the drivers were to be found manning these OMO routes on a marked-in basis while others might work a rest-day as an OMO if they had undergone the training.

  About this time a driver in Clontarf called Footsie found himself working on the North Wall. Footsie was aptly named because this guy had massive clogs for feet. Footsie was big in other ways too. He was a particularly big hit with the ladies who were attracted by his dexterity around the dance floor. He would literally sweep them off their feet by standing them up on his huge insteps as he glided round the floor. They were equally impressed on the walk home afterwards particularly if there was any lovers’ lane handy on the route where Footsie might demonstrate some other of his big attributes.

  Footsie used to have his boots specially made. This was an expensive business so much so that Footsie could only afford to have one pair of brogues to be made at one time. These boots were always black so that they would match his uniform. As a consequence most of his civvies were in darker colours to go with the boots. It was always Footsie’s dream and ambition to have a pair of brown brogues so that he could expand his wardrobe. If only he could afford the extra pair. It may have been one reason why he worked OMO.

  Just after Christmas one year Footsie was working the last North Wall. He had a fair load on for the B&I Boat as many of the emigrant workers and navvies were heading back to Blighty after spending the Christmas with their families. After pulling into Clontarf Garage and parking the bus Footsie, while making his cursory last check for lost property, discovered a big hunk of a country lad crouched into the corner of the back seat dead asleep to the world and obviously a bit worse for wear from the drink. Cradled on his lap in his arms was his bag of belongings. The bag rose and fell like a gentle tide with his steady breathing.

  “Wake-up son!” Footsie called out as he shook the young lad. “You’ve arrived whether you like it or not!”

  The young lad, startled by Footsie’s massive shake, blurted out:

  “Have we landed then…show me the way to the London train…”

  “‘Tis a long way from London ye are son, more nearer to Tipperary in fact!”

  “Wha! Where am I? Where’s this?”

  Footsie calmly explained as the young lad got unsteadily to his feet.

  “Ah no!” The young lad sighed: “ Wha’ time is it? If I miss that boat McAlpine’ll have me life! Please ye got to help me! Get me to the boat on time! I’ll give ye anything! Name yer price! Pleaaaase!”

  Footsie looked him up and down. He felt sorry for the poor bugger. Then he noticed the young lad’s feet or more properly the lovely spanking brand new brown leather brogues that the young lad was wearing.

  “Here!” Footsie commanded: “ Ger up and stand beside me for a minute…”

  “As I thought.” Footsie grinned with satisfaction: “Sure I’ll get you to the boat, son, but just on one condition.”

  Footsie pulled the bus out of the garage and drove hell bent for rubber to catch the B&I Boat for the young navvy. They made it with minutes to spare before the gangplank was raised.

  “I’m mightily obliged to you, sir!” The young lad said gratefully before parting.

  “Sure it’s nothing son,” Footsie replied, feeling a little guilty: “So ‘tis all right about the shoes then….”

  “No bother!” The young lad said sincerely: “Think of them as a belated Christmas present!”

  The young lad boarded the boat; but nobody seemed to notice that he walked up the gangplank in his stocking feet.

  When Footsie got home he couldn’t wait to try on his new Christmas brogues:

  “Just as I thought,” He smiled with satisfaction: “Made to measure! A perfect fit!”

  AND ALL HIS SONGS WERE SAD

  (A Full-length Play)


  Mattie Lennon

  My name is John O ‘Halloran, and I’m eighty-one years old.

  I left my boyhood days behind, for to search for fame and gold.

  I left my home in Tralee town, in my twenty-second year.

  I would dig the gold on England’s shore, and I’d make my fortune there.

  The weary months in search of work, the tramp through street and road,

  A shake-me-down in Camden Town, it was my first abode.

  No friendly glance to cheer my heart, no man to shake my hand,

  No easy gold only rain and cold, in this God Forsaken land.

  Go down that trench Proud Irishman, for you are strong and big,

  Go take that shovel by the neck, spit on your hands and dig.

  Tear out the guts from Mother Earth, from the dawn till fading light,

  In the nearest pub you’ll spend your sub, and you’ll hate and love and fight.

  I have tramped around this country now, for fifty years or more,

  I’ve met some women in my time, the good one and the whore.

  I’ve tramped it down to Preston town, I have skippered in the rain,

  I’ve cursed and prayed, I’ve been poorly paid,

  I’ve known hunger, joy and pain.

  I loved a girl in Liverpool, a sweet one from Mayo,

  I’ve slept with girls from Tiger Bay, with teeth like virgin snow.

  I have ate my foods in small sheebeens, and I’ve drunk the porter black,

  A dirty bed for to lay my head, where the lice crawled up my back.