K8 the GR8

The phone rang when I least expected it to.  I was having an anti-social kind of day, the kind of day happily spent playing solitaire on the computer and going slowly crazy in between rounds of half-assed house cleaning.

“Who the f..? *click* Yell-low?” I was ready for entertainment, not serious conversation.

A man’s voice spoke, it was as lyrical as an Australian accent, but soft with a slightly Welsh tinge.  I’m guessing New Zealand.  He was very easy to listen to.  So easy, in fact, that I wasn’t really paying much attention to his words. 

He started his conversation by asking me if I was still in the *mumbledy* recource group, that he was from some local paper or other.

“Yeah!  Sure, why not!”  I said. 

He went on to describe how this local politician was whingeing in his earhole about the N11.  Apparently a bunch of locals are getting together to stage a protest about this road.  He asked me if I knew anything about this.

The N11, for anyone who doesn’t know about it, is the main road that runs between Dublin and Rosslare, the two main ports on the Republic’s east coast.  It hasn’t been redesigned in many decades, so is totally inadequate for the volume of traffic it gets.  Holiday campers heading south for the weekend may as well walk.  There is also a bottle neck at the worst possible spot that leads to a stretch of road which is riddled with tight bends.  Almost every weekend, you’ll find a car or a truck has overturned into a ditch, thus increasing the pandemonium.

Seeing as the powers that be seem to be ploughing all their funds into the city center these days, it’s hardly surprising that there’s unrest around this neck of the country.  It’s nothing new. 

“A protest?  Nah, I’d no idea, but I’m not surprised.”  I told him.

“Really?  So this has happened before?”

“Are you shitting me?  The road’s a joke.  I just thought people had given up by now.  Everyone knows that the powers that be aren’t worth the paper the statistics are printed on.  Anyway, the traffic itself isn’t a problem for us around here.  We just use the back roads.  You’d want to be doolally to use the main road.”

“So why do you think these people are protesting if they can use alternative routes?”  He asked.

“I dunno.  Only a pure gobshite would go anywhere near that road at rush-hour.  It probably has more to do with the fact that so many cars roll on the Ballynameesda bends, but sure politicians don’t seem to care.  They use it as a Darwinian tool to eliminate drink-drivers.”

“Are you serious?” He exclaimed.

“Yeah, but you’re seriously asking the wrong person here.  I don’t know anything about anything.”

“No, it’s okay, you’ve been more than helpful in this!  Thank you for your input.”

*click*

I stared at the phone for a few minutes.  The man’s tone had been quite serious in hindsight, almost as though the conversation had been staged, possibly recorded.  I hope he didn’t assume I was somebody influencial, because he sure did treat me that way.  These people shouldn’t assume that everybody in local resource groups are intelligent leaders of society.  I’m only in it by accident, purely for the free coffee, caught in a decidedly un-quotable mood.

After a while of wondering how this chap got hold of my mobile phone number, a very clearly defined headline began to swim in the waters of my confused mind.

LOCAL HIPPIE CHICK BEHIND BARS FOR UNMITIGATED SLANDER