On my commute this morning to work I had to endure a loudmouth African roaring on his phone. When I told him to shut the fuck up and turn off his loudspeaker he proceeded to call me racist, and said he'd report me to Dublin Bus. I told him to go ahead.
Ah yes: the 'go-ahead' routine: you hand the conductor a pile of change and tap him on the wrist. He sorts the coins, clicks the ticket dispenser, an hands you back a few coins with a nod and a a wink. Then you start complaining about the price of a bus ticket these days?
After this pleasant incident I was walking along the footpath, approaching my office,
The dole office most likely.
when I noticed a group of foreigners (probably Brazilian) blocking the footpath. I proceeded to barge through them and berate them (in my strongest Dublin accent) for being ignorant cunts. One of the cunts threw down his rucksack, imitating that he wanted to fight but I just laughed at him and carried on.
So you spotted a gang of lads, the decided to gung ho it through the lot of them like you were Giant Haystacks?
Of course you did, you idiot plonker spoofer.
One of my pastimes these days is barging through groups of foreigners who feel they have a right to block the footpath.
Young mothers at the school gates? The queues outside the soup kitchens? The gangs outside the dole office? Smokers outside dodgy bars and lounges? The gangs of protesters and the homeless along O'Connell Street? The gangs of black lads outside the high street sports shops looking for an angle on doing a hit-and-run for some new sneakers by Puma/Adidas?
You're some half-pipe fantasist, Frank.
Of course you did.
I think one of the worst things about mass immigration (particularly on the scale we've had in Dublin) is that this sort of alien behaviour (to Irish people) becomes a regular feature of life.
And yet, due to Irish emigration, there isn't a single city on the entire planet without an Irish bar? Helsinki has three. They have fuck all to do with Ireland or Irish culture. They're mad-houses. They're opened by chancers looking to cash in on the Irish reputation for drunken brawls and other sleazy shennanigans. The last private Irish embassy event I attended I met and spoke with the owner: Molly Malone's, one of downtown Helsinki's most popular pubs for heavy drinking and meat marketing for the ride.
I told him, in company with several other business owners, that he ought to be ashamed of himself in the shitty hawking of Irish culture he makes his money on. When he opened that bar in 1990's, I and many other musicians toured through it, usually a six-nighter deal: sail in from Stockholm overnight on Sunday, play a few acoustic sets in the Captain's Bar on the top deck to cover the ticket for the truck, band, and crew. Access to the staff eatery (always splendid) and free drinks at the bar. Monday morning we berth, deport, set up stage, rest, then play through until the following Saturday night before departing onwards to Tallin, Estonia.
Molly's was always packed to the gills when we played. We have to get them up on the seats and tables dancing and singing. And crucially: spilling and breaking the glasses. More sales you see. The stage was central, nicely lit, nice PA, nice fold-back, no worries at all.
These days his stage fits two people, has no PA or lights, and is down the rear hallway right outside the gent's toilets. The smell of bleach and piss alone would floor you, but then there's an indoor smoking room beside that again. Up in the main area he has two DJ booths. Two dance floors. Techno and house all night long. All the staff are Finnish. No Irish people at all work there.
I asked him why he turned a very popular and highly successful Irish bar into a techno dance club and left the Irish flags all over the exterior. The street signs nailed to walls, the bikes nailed to the ceilings, the manky frames in the gents with front pages of The Irish Times from the 1950s. Pictures of Pearse, Connolly, Bono, Geldof, Michael D Higgins, etc, etc. While playing hard techno and deep house. He looked at me like I was trying to start a scrap with him. He stuttered a few words about '
changing models of modern business strategies' and '
staying within the market demands to maintain employment for a dozen staff members' and other buzz-word malarkey.
I told him I thought he was a parasite, a leech making huge money through cultural misrepresentation and cultural theft.
He just looked at me and waited, so I looked at him and waited.
Then he excused himself and went to the jacks. When he came out, first thing he saw was me: standing on the one square meter of stage raised about six inches off the floor. '
Smells lovely here, doesn't it Petri?' and he's drying his hands with a tissue. '
Any idea how soul-destroying it must be for a singer to travel all the way from Ireland to stand here singing about Molly Malone and whiskey in the jar with this smell of piss, shit, puke and tobacco butts thick in the air?' And he tries to walk away again. So I let him, then I follow. I see him in another gaggle of suits talking about business, so I hop in and say '
I can still smell the gent's toilets even from here where the actual stage used to be. Is there a problem with the sewers or what?' And so after blanking me, he shakes a few hands and then leaves.
I was told afterwards by the embassy staff that he said he never felt so embarrassed and cornered.
Fine, suits me - I wasn't wrong and I still think he's a parasite, and I'm glad to know he does too.
And yet Paddy and Bridie can still be found queuing outside his hell-hole every Friday and Saturday night?
Yours is a losing game, Frank: you haven't a fucking leg to stand on, let alone barging through gangs of foreign men playing it, you big spoofing fucking cunt.
Before the era of mass immigration, I don't remember ever having to barge through groups of obnoxious arseholes blocking the footpath.
Then your Ma did a great job of hiding herself in the queues outside the local soup kitchen, didn't she, Frankie?
It's the same thing in the supermarket, where I've noticed the non-Irish almost never let you pass in the queue if you have one or two items - something we always did naturally.
Not to mention the several more items in your inside pocket, purchased with the five-finger discount.
Small things perhaps, but it all adds up to make for a very different society.
So your contribution to the issues in Ireland is to behave with as much hostility and aggravation as you can (spoof) muster, all the while thinking that you're doing great work for Ireland? You're a fucking idiot, Frank. A natural born loser. I hope the next gaggle of cunts you pass in the street with a huff and a puff hand you back your two ears, you stupid little prick.
What a fucking gobshite.