No politics this week. Far more important issue to address, writes Kilian Doyle
Some of you may remember a column here last year about The Smiggen. I'm sad to have to report that Smigs - wonderful, hilarious and much-loved legend that he was - has finally lost his long battle with cancer. It was one he fought with courage, dignity and as much good humour and self-deprecation as could have been mustered by any man in his position. Nobody who knew Smigs would have expected any less.
He left me many great memories. I could rattle on for pages. But as this is ostensibly a motoring column, tenous links must be established. Lucky for me then that he was car mad.
Not that his motoring career got off to the most auspicious of starts. In fact, it began with him crashing his father's black Mazda 323. By putting it into first rather than reverse. Easily done, you say. Problem was, he was inside a garage at the time. Whoops.
The Smiggen loved that car. Four times a week he was out polishing it. Eventually, the thing had more wax on it than a bee's backside and weighed 11 tons.
As teenagers, our crew spent many a pointless night tearing around the hills of Wicklow in each other's parents' cars. Wise folk that they were, my folks never handed their keys over. Knew me too well. As a result, I'd often end up being ferried about by Smigs.
Which was a mixed blessing. At least you were always reasonably confident he'd get you home in one piece. The trade-off was you had to put up with his woeful taste in music. Wham, Take That, Elvis and Frank Sinatra pumping out of the stereo, Smigs warbling along, oblivious to the scoffing sniggers coming from the murder of Goth mates in the back.
Sadly, the Mazda met an ignominious end. He shared custody of it with one of his sisters, who implanted it in a tree one morning, wrecking both it and herself. (She maintains to this day she only crashed because her leg was zapped by a loose wire hanging from the ill-fitting stereo. Yeah, I know. Me neither.)
Hospital room. Smigs walks in to see his lacerated sibling lying broken in the bed. Starts rattling something metallic in his pocket. "What's that?" says the sister, confused.
"That, darling sister, is all that's left of my car," answers he, half-joking. Or was it half-serious? You never could tell with him.
His last motor was a Saab. Again, he loved it. It was, in a way, the motoring equivalent of himself. From the outside, it looked normal enough. Steady, reliable, not too flash. But get inside, different bag of hammers. With its numerous idiosyncrasies, including having buttons in the oddest of places, it was quirky as a unicycling dolphin in fishnets and guaranteed to crack you up. A perfect match, those two.
The last time I spoke to him was after I ranted about those human dung beetles who park illegally in disabled spaces. He was fuming. Smigs had, that very day, been enjoying - if that's the right word - his first day of freedom in his new wheelchair.
Arriving at the supermarket, he found all the disabled spaces were taken up by selfish morons. He was forced to park 16 million miles away. Angry though he was, being a decent man, he resisted the temptation to do what I would have done in his situation and carve lumps out of the side of the cretins' cars with a chainsaw.
Now The Smiggen is gone.
He'll be sorely missed. I'd like to think he's currently cruising about in the greatest Saab ever made, Take That on full blast, Elvis passed out in the back and Ol' Blue Eyes riding shotgun, giving Smigs directions to the best little karaoke bar in town, where he can get up and croon My Wayto his heart's content. All together now . . .