My friend Smiggen has always been different, writes Kilian Doyle.
When the rest of our motley crew were rolling around the mean streets of south Dublin in the late 1980s dolled up to the nines as Goths - I myself spent most of my late teens looking like a cross between Dracula and Liberace - he was ambling along in his nice jumper and ironed jeans humming "Club Tropicana drinks are free ..." to himself.
Where we got our kicks from shouting along to tunes by Bauhaus and the Cure, he was tickling his eardrums with the dulcet harmonies of Wham! and Take That. Never a thought crossed The Smiggen's mind to come over to the Dark Side. And we all loved him for it. Now, nearly 20 years later, we have common ground, The Smiggen and I. Namely, a penchant for odd cars. I've got the beloved Bavarian Princess, he has a Saab.
"Know the way you love your car because she's different?" he asked me.
"I'm the same. People say only doctors and vets and architects drive Saabs because they're so quirky. But that's why I love her. You understand, don't you?"
I do.
The Smiggen has cancer. Stomach and liver. Little mutant cells are munching him from the inside out. He's 36. Fair? Maybe if he were a wife-beating tax-dodging SUV-driving child-hater it'd be fair. But he's not. He's The Smiggen.
Still, to talk to him, you'd be hard pressed to know he'd anything worse bothering him than an upset stomach and an inability to eat Big Macs. I grumble more when I stub my thumb and can't get a decent espresso. A lesson to us all, The Smiggen.
I went to visit him in hospital. Felt a bit awkward. We gazed out the window, desperate to find anything to talk about other than the big grey elephant sitting in the middle of the floor.
"Nice motor," said the Smiggen, nodding at a BMW 6-Series convertible parked outside.
"Yeah, but look where it's parked," said I. "In a flippin' disabled space."
"Ah, let him off," said he. "What chance is there of a disabled person needing that space here, in a hospital, anyway?" Nearly as sarky as me, the Smiggen.
The Smiggen finally broke the ice with a sledgehammer of a scéal. It went a little something like this:
He'd just had his first op. Been sliced up in one hospital and woken up in another. Was a tad confused. Hardly surprising as he was as drugged as Pete Doherty with the keys to the confiscated heroin vault at Afghanistan's drug squad headquarters.
He was slipping in and out of consciousness as his consultant embarked on a 20-minute spiel about prognoses, radiotherapy, isotope treatment, yadda yadda yadda.
"Any questions?" says Doc finally.
"So, what do you drive yourself?" comes the question from the wasted loon in the leaba.
"Err, sorry, said the medical maestro. I don't get what you mean."
All the brains in the world, yet he couldn't get his head around the Smiggen's reasoning. Bemused, he looked at his patient's mother and sisters for help.
"You'd best answer," they said as one.
"Well, I had an Opel Astra . . ."
"Ah, no, sure that won't do at all," comes the voice from the bed.
"Can't be having that."
". . . but I've since bought a new Mercedes."
(Audible sigh of relief from the patient.)
"Grand so, you'll do. Do whatever you think, doctor, you're the expert."
Consultant exits. Baffled.
No doubt you are too. I'll let the Smiggen explain: "The thing is, I don't want some loser in an Astra chopping chunks out of me," he said. "He may be a perfectly decent chap and a fine doctor, but I want the fatcat in the brand-new Merc. It's a confidence thing. You know by looking at what he drives that he's top notch. Who's going to trust a consultant who can only afford an Astra?" Smart lad, The Smiggen. He'll go a long way.