EMISSIONS: Kilian Doyle blows a gasket
It's the New Year, so that must mean it's time for everyone to bow their drowsy heads and begin drafting lists of honourable, if ultimately unrealisable, resolutions. Personally, I find making resolutions about as worthwhile as arranging my toenail clippings in a mahogany display case, neatly placing them in rows according to weight, colour and curvature.
Not for me the hollow promises made in the throes of post-Christmas remorse and regret at flagrant overindulgence. See, I'm a man of my convictions . . . everything I say or write is to be taken in utmost seriousness. So here are a few to keep me amused for a couple of weeks:
1 I promise to continue to be as unmerciful, vituperative and crotchety as I feel like to those who deserve it. It pays the rent. And, conversely, I pledge to keep doling out begrudging praise to those who deserve it. (To whit, keep up the good work, Mr Brennan, yer doing grand so far. You're not there yet, but you're getting there . . . all you have to do now is shaft the insurance companies and other motor industry profiteers, and I might even give you a gold star.)
2 Let the air out of a motorbike cop's tyres as he's admiring his tightly-leathered physique in the window of Clery's on O'Connell Street. I'll sneak up on him as he's preening himself while ostensibly guarding the Spike from the thousands of peasants who will inevitably want to scratch their names into its gleaming steel. It'd be childish, trivial, pointless and stupid, but it'd make me giggle as I'm jackbooted up and down the street.
3 In a similar vein, I resolve to commandeer a bus along the Quality Bus Corridor and drive everyone to the seaside instead of their boring offices. I shall plead guilty by reason of humanity when I'm dragged up before a court. Get me a jury of a dozen commuters, and I'll be a free man and a national hero to boot.
4 Find a taxi driver who isn't a bigoted slob (we all know they're out there somewhere) and tell them to get a real job, for the sake of their soul.
5 Buy a big shovel and start digging a dirty great hole under Leinster House in which to put Dublin's first Metro Station. I'll wait until August, when there is no news, and invite every media organisation on the planet to witness the event. Can you imagine them on Sky News? They'd lap it up. (I can picture the newsreader now, lip curling smugly as she patronisingly introduces another segment about a mad Irishman.) Hopefully I'll get a few hundred students or other wasters to join me and we'll humiliate the Government into mucking in. Again, I'll be a national hero. (Anyone sense a trend here?)
6 Get myself adequate health insurance, covering all possible eventualities, whether my fault or otherwise - see 8.
7 Be particularly nice to she who must be obeyed, for it's she who owns the nifty little motor parked outside our happy little home. This period of extra-indulgence of her every whim will be subtly peppered with subliminal messages to the effect that driving around carparks and risking life and limb on the M50 while supervising me are damn fine ideas - see 8 again.
8 Get myself a full driving licence. I'm fed up cycling around damp-arsed waiting for public transport to catch up with the first world. I'm not a tolerant or patient man - and becoming one is not on this list.
9 Be nice to motorbike couriers. I suspect they may be still displeased with the abuse I meted out to them last year.
10 Stop being nice to motorbike couriers once I've achieved number 8 and subsequently bought myself an armoured personnel carrier.