What a glimpse into the face of the new Ireland one gets when one travels by Dublin bus. I made such a journey recently, on the upper deck of the 65, from the city centre to Blessington, with large numbers of the tattooed classes as travelling companions, certainly as far as Tallaght.
Now life has taught me to treat people with tattoos with the deference I normally reserve for Garda officers with Uzis who have just been stung by wasps. So when a tattoo lights up in a no-smoking zone, in general, I inwardly counsel timidity, which in my lexicon also goes by the name of prudence. An Australian tourist sitting near me on the 65 was clearly unacquainted with that lexicon, for when a young she-tattoo beside him lit up, he asked her, very politely, would she mind putting her cigarette out┤, because she was showing no respect for other passengers.
"Shut the f**k up," declared this hospitable paragon loudly, "and f**k off back where you came from, you f**kin' bleedin' foreigner."
Tobacco smoke
Well, really. One can just about endure other people's illegal tobacco smoke, and perhaps even maintain a certain heroic aloofness while doing so; but there is something in the old system which rises in ungovernable revolt when visitors to this country are thus addressed, especially if they are called a "fuqqin forddennor."
However, I am at disadvantage when talking to a tattoo, for not even my fondest admirer would concede that I am a master of Ireland's numerous argots and accents; and tattoo is quite beyond me. But silence was equally beyond me. Turning to the young and fragrant creature, I simply said: "Our young visitor here is perfectly correct. It is against the law to smoke on a bus. Might I suggest you put the cigarette out?"
My memory is sometimes an able instrument, and there are certain things which it can recall which should be beyond its power of retention but which strangely are not. But alas, it is not able to do credit to the ensuing stream of abuse and contumely, which would have drawn a nunly pallor to the cheek of a sergeant-major. In essence, and converting her terminology to more Latinate and more circumspect language, this petal of Irish womanhood simply informed me to mind my coital business, that I was a copulating pudendum, and if I didn't button my copulating lip, she would coitally well defenestrate me, using a boot about my conjugating private parts to achieve that objective.
Well, something on those lines, anyway.
Different tactic
And then she embarked upon a different tactic. "Who the phuc do yew tink yew are anyways, wid your shoes, and your suit, and your phuqqin' Sunday Independent?. A phuqqin' solicitor?" The creature was clearly unacquainted with any broadsheet other than that august organ emanating from Middle Abbey Street, so she assumed the copy of this newspaper that I was reading was the Sunday Independent. But that did not hurt quite so much as the presumption that I belonged to the lawyering classes; here, now, was a crushing blow, and one which left me speechless.
At which point my antipodean friend chose - I think on balance inadvisedly - to speak up again. "Look," he said, in a voice plangent with sweet reason, "would you please put that cigarette out?" To which St Theresa of the Roses replied (loosely translated): "Hearken well, oh gentlemen of foreign extraction, and stay silent, else I shall rearrange your copulating reproductive organs with my coital feet - do you catch my conjugal drift?" And so saying, the she-tattoo sat back in her seat, her face triumphant as she received the congratulations of strangers around her. And with the principles which she had so bravely defended now vindicated, her neighbours then promptly lit up.
I confess that my reserves of valour, limited at the best of times, by this time had been squandered in the futile assault on her single cigarette, and I was no more capable of storming the veritable fortress of cigarette-smokers now around me than I was of converting Alabama to Islam.
Tradition of courtesy
There was a time when a foreign tourist such as the (now silent, scarlet-cheeked) Australian would have been defended by most natives in such circumstances. That time, it now seems, is past. No doubt there has always been a tradition of not obeying the law; but there was an equal tradition of courtesy and hospitality which would have caused a large group of Irish people to have defended an outsider against such vile abuse. Instead, the she-tattoo was hailed as a hero - or perhaps heroin would have been a better word - and our visitor was left to muse upon what an enchanting country Ireland has become.
Travelling by bus into the city doesn't even save time: this trip of 20 miles took two hours (a journey made all the more fascinating by a journey through most of Tallaght's back streets). How often does Dublin Bus management actually travel on the upper deck of its vehicles to see how truly abominable it is up there? How many people have been prosecuted for illegal smoking and for threatening passengers who complain? And how really stupid must you be to travel by Dublin Bus when you have a car?
Here is a promise. Mark it well, Dublin Bus management, and weep: regardless of how long I have to sit in my car in a Dublin traffic jam, I will never travel on one of your sanguinary copulating omnibuses, ever again.