'One, two, three, four, we want no subs in Dublin 4!'

The old dear is rallying the troops against this sambo shop in Donnybrook, and they’re not going to roll over in a hurry

‘The Barbarians are at the gates!” the old dear was quoted as saying this week at the launch of Four Warned, Four Armed, an umbrella organisation set up to – get this – “co-ordinate the activities of the various campaign groups striving to protect Dublin 4 from creeping degentrification”.

See, she’s become quite protective of the area since she bought that aportment of hers on Ailesbury Road with her proceeds from the sale of the old gaff.

"This whole current economic business is slowly eroding the boundaries between the social classes," she even said on, like, Six Onethe other night. "It's up to those who live in this area – and who enjoy its treasure of existingamenities – to stand up and say, 'Thus far – and no further!' "

I suppose events of the last few weeks have, as Samantha Libreri put it in her report, created the impression of a community under siege. There's the drive-through McDonald's that they're threatening to put in Sandymount. (The drive-by McDonald's, as the old dear calls it.) There's the ongoing battle with RTÉ over the Fair Cityset and the nuisance of south Dublin actors pretending to be northsiders at all hours of the day and night. All that andthe Berkeley Court – where I paid 150 Ks to get married, what, five years ago? – renting out rooms for less than the taxi fare out of town.

Every morning the old dear wakes up, her gaff is worth a grand less than it was when she went to sleep. "I think you'll find that Ipredicted this," she said on the news. "I was the one who said that 7-Up Christmas on Ice was the stort of a slippery slope and – if you remember – people laughed."

Themost immediate threat, she and her friends have decided, is the Subway outlet they're planning to put in Donnybrook Village, and last Saturday was the first, like, day of action organised to protest against it.

Of course, the old Rossmeister General couldn’t resist the temptation to go along – just to rip the piss, naturally. I double-porked on the road opposite Donnybrook Fair and watched them morching backwards and forwards, roysh, with their placords, in front of the vacant unit a few doors up from Terroirs.

There was some number of them as well. We’re talking 30, maybe 40, mostly women, all torted up in Monica Peters’s best, the hum of Chanel No 5 wafting up Morehampton Road like the contrails of an F15.

And then, of course, the chant. "One, two, three, four, turkey roll and coleslaw! Five, six, seven, eight, it belongs in Dublin 8!" I leaned on the old horn, roysh, gave them three or four serious blasts of it, which brought the entire protest to a pretty much standstill? I got out of the cor and storted making my way over to them.

One of the women – I recognised her from the old dear's Ban Poor People from the National Gallery on Tuesday Afternoons campaign of 2001 – went, "Is that your son, Fionnuala?" and the old dear, I could tell from her face, actually considereddenying it? Which hurt. Has to be said, ithurt.

“Look at the state of you,” I went. “Look, the focking pavement’s cracking under the weight of all that Botox.”

“I hope you’re not here to cause unpleasantness,” the old dear went. “This is a serious protest.”

I just, like, shrugged. “It’s a free country,” I went.

She storted giving it the whole drama-queen act then. She was there, "It is nota free country! That's one of the points we're trying to make here. We all have responsibilities to the community."

“And this is yours?”

"Ross, if this roll shopis allowed to open, there's going to workmenand all sorts of other undesirables flooding into this area. There are schools in this area, Ross! Delma's sister has two girls in John Scottus."

I was about to come back with something unbelievably clever and funny when all of a sudden my phone rang. I could see that it was Sorcha's number. She wasn't a happy rabbit with me, I knew. Had nothing to do with me ruining her sister's wedding, I should point out. Orlocking her grandmother in the refrigeration truck that brought the flowers to the church, then the old bird nearly dying of pretty much hypothermia? No, she forgave me for all that.

It's just that I took our daughter to the flicks to see that Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Anyway, on the way home, Honor just happened to ask me – you know the way their minds work at that age – how they managed to get the dogs and cats to move their mouths like they were actually talking? And I said – and I don't knowwhy? – that they attached tiny electrodes to their tongues and basically shocked them every couple of seconds. Of course she burst into tears then, and for the next 20 minutes I literally couldn't stop her. I honestly haven't seen anyone cry that much since I told her mother the exact same thing about Babeback in the 1990s.

Anyway, I ended up having to just leave her on Sorcha’s doorstep, ring the bell and peg it, which I knew was what Sorcha wanted to talk to me about at that moment. So I killed the call and switched the Wolfe on to silent, then went back to the old dear.

"You're making a show of yourself," I went. " Andme. I've a thing for Samantha Libreri – you knowthat. What'll it do to my chances if she knows what kind of family I come from?"

"This thingthat's happening to Dublin 4, it affects you as well," she tried to go.

I was like, “Er, how?”

“Ask Angela over there. Her husband went to a match at that new stadium down there.”

“Yeah, presumably we’re talking the interpro. So what?”

"A man in a yellow bib, Ross – he was clearly working class from the description we've been given – wanted €10 from him for directinghim into a public parking space."

“I’m not saying that’s right.”

“Of course it’s not right. But your father said it happens at Croke Park all the time. ‘This is what happens when you lie down with dogs.’ They were Charles’s very words, Ross. And that’s

the kind of thing that Four Warned, Four Armed is fighting against.”

She raised her hand and struck up the chant again.

“One, two, three, four, we want no subs in Dublin 4! Five, six, seven, eight, meatballs on bread is what we hate!”

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