Gurriers (86 page)

Despite being very nervous I was relishing putting the plan that I had had three weeks to devise into operation. Prickface was going to learn within these walls that the courier that he thought he could bully was well able to speak up for himself and make a stand against his aggressor that would make him think twice before ever picking on a courier again.

Even though I was expecting it I was still a little bit shocked to hear the court clerk call out my name with Prickface McWanker as the prosecuting gard. I arose shakily from the seat that I had strategically chosen, in the middle of the room and close to the front from where the judge would have no problem seeing or
hearing me, while Prickface took the stand and was sworn in with a cocky air about him. At the behest of the judge he outlined the case, reading from the file that he had opened on the banister of the stand in front of him. He looked pleased with himself as he closed this file, having put forward an exaggerated version of events outlining me as a menace on two wheels. He didn’t even notice that I too was brandishing a file. The judge looked from him to me.

“Mr Flanagan, do you have any questions for the gard?” he said matter-of- factly - a choice that he offered, compelled by law, to many accused every day.

“Yes I do, your honour. Garda McWanker (of course I used his real name here) could you please tell the court what the speed limit is on Barrow Street?”

This took him by surprise, particularly since speed hadn’t been an issue in his case. My full attention was on Prickface and I was focussed on my objective, but I noticed the judge shoot a questioning look at me over the edge of his thin rimmed glasses.

Prickface replied falteringly, “Well, it’s a built up area so it must be thirty miles per hour.”

“Did you drive down it at this speed?”

“Well, yes. I presume so.”

“You did not, Garda McWanker, you slowed down to twenty miles per hour on three separate occasions when there was traffic coming the other way because you knew that I was behind you and that you could charge me with dangerous overtaking had I moved to pass you out. You then accelerated to thirty miles per hour when there was no traffic coming the other way, meaning that I could not overtake you without breaking the speed limit. What you did, Garda McWanker, was persecute an honest, hard working taxpayer as he went about his job; a job that is undeniably a particularly time sensitive one. Your honour, I have here a copy of a formal complaint that I personally submitted to the Superintendant of the Dublin 4 area highlighting the despicable behaviour of Garda McWanker and his
colleague if you would care to peruse it.” I held the file high in my left hand, gesturing towards the clerk that he should fetch it for the judge. The clerk didn’t have a chance to move towards me, however, because the judge addressed me in a particularly stern tone.

“Mr Flanagan, this is not the place for your complaint. We are only interested in the case at hand. Do you have anything else to say pertaining to this?”

This set me back a little, but I was in full flight and Prickface was rightly shaken up. I knew that I had him on the ropes.

“Yes I do, your honour. Garda McWanker claims that I am guilty of dangerous overtaking, but the vehicle that I overtook was at a standstill, and I made eye contact with the driver in her mirror as I moved to pass them. They then put on their sirens and mounted the footpath to pursue me. I pulled over and they then both took turns being nasty to me in such a despicable way as to be a disgrace to the uniforms that taxpayers like me pay for them to wear. The details of their persecution are contained here in this complaint that I made against them if you would care to-”

“Mr Flanagan, I have already told you that this is not the place for that. Put it away now. Garda McWanker, do you have anything to add to this case?”

“Your honour I...I don’t know where these accusations came from.”

“From your outrageous behaviour, that’s where!”

“Mr Flanagan that’s enough!” The judge was really angry with me now. He turned to Prickface once more, who withered visibly under his stern gaze. “Garda McWanker, did this man make eye contact with the driver of the vehicle?”

“W- w- well, I er I can’t say for sure.”

“Right. Mr Flanagan, since there is doubt about the overtaking I have no choice but to drop the charge of dangerous overtaking.”

It was my turn to look smug now. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Prickface so deflated in front of his colleagues who would, hopefully, take the piss out of him about this for a long time to
come. The whole courtroom seemed to have a buzz about it, with a murmur of satisfaction rippling around the accused parties upon witnessing an accuser publically humbled. The judge wasn’t finished his deliberations though.

“However, on the count of driving without due care and consideration,” He glared at me over the rim of his glasses, openly threatening, as he paused for effect before continuing. “Of which I have no doubt whatsoever, I fine you two hundred pounds and decree that an endorsement be placed on your licence.”

He might as well have kicked me in the balls with hobnail boots on. Two hundred pounds and an endorsement! If I had stayed quiet and accepted responsibility for both charges I wouldn’t have been fined so heavily and probably wouldn’t have been endorsed either. Still, I wouldn’t have put Prickface in his place by accepting his charges. Despite the fact that I had been punished as severely as possible by a pissed off judge, I stood and stared venomously at Prickface as he slinked away from the stand, his face burning with the embarrassment that I had inflicted upon him.

I had a couple of options regarding the fine and the endorsement. I could have appealed on the grounds of severity or taken a gamble and not paid or submitted my licence. After some deliberation I opted for the latter and never heard about it again. I’m not sure how these things go, but I would like to think that it was put to Prickface to pursue me for the unpaid fine and he decided not to - avoiding ever having to do battle with me again.

The saga of Prickface McWanker doesn’t end there though. I did submit the complaint that I had brandished in court and got a personal reply from the Superintendant two weeks after that day. He thanked me for bringing the incident to his attention but regretted to inform me that the matter was now beyond his jurisdiction, since Garda McWanker had transferred to the Traffic Department/ Motorbike Division. Prickface McWanker was now a porno faggot!

This was terrible news for me. Instead of having the gard that I had made an enemy of stationed in one part of the city
doing shifts covering 24 hours, he would now be all over the city working office hours - the same hours as me - and on a bike instead of in a car or on foot. I calculated that I was now 20 times more likely to run into him again and he would be able to give me a good run for my money should our paths cross and I decided to run.

Two things combined to help me in this situation. The first was the courier community and the willingness of all to help our brothers, especially in any instance involving the law. The second was that Prickface McWanker had a particularly big nose. Huge, in fact, so big that he was very easily spotted and identified from a distance by any courier who knew to look out for him, which most of the couriers in Dublin did before very long. In all of his time as a porno faggot, Prickface McWanker had his movements traced and reported by the courier community in our city. He was labelled as “Shy Boy’s friend” and when a courier spotted him, every courier in that company knew where he was and what direction he was heading in seconds. Seconds later every courier that was near a courier from that company, or stopped at a red light with one of them knew. Seconds later again every courier in every one of these companies knew and so on so that most of the couriers in the city would know what red light he was stopped at before it turned green.

This wasn’t solely for my benefit - it benefitted all to be able to avoid a courier hating cop and it was a buzz for all to monitor one this way.

I had to make slight alterations to my routes a few times to avoid him and passed him going the opposite way once in Dublin Castle when he was beginning a patrol just as I was cutting through en route to Dublin 8, but I never had to deal with the fucker again.

Despite those two bad apples, it bodes well for the Gardai in general that I was only ever treated so unfairly once. I can’t say that I regard them with any measure of ill will and I have to give them credit for doing a tough and dangerous job that they don’t get enough credit for.

I know how they feel!

“Quick, nail it! Don’t let that taxi get owa there! Faster!”

“Vinno, we’re in a taxi!”

“Doesn’t matter, them fuckers ha’e each other as much as we ha’e them! They’re not like us couriers at all! Aw! He gor ou’!”

Couriers and taxis, cats and dogs: both perfect examples that full time drivers have less tolerance for other road users, and begrudge those that do better than them.

I imagine if I was stuck sitting in traffic all day I would harbour a lot of venom in my attitude towards any profession that ushered past me every few seconds, almost unaffected by the stinking mess that had me so imprisoned. Not that I intend to give any justification to the bastards for the way that they treat me and my kind.

Once their meters are on they’re getting paid. And as for the rest of the begrudgers, if you don’t like traffic, buy a bike! If you haven’t got the balls for a bike, don’t take it out on those that do!

Of all of the motorists on the road, I had most of my negative episodes with taxi drivers. The majority of these episodes
were over them purposefully (in my opinion) blocking gaps to prevent me from getting past them, slamming on the brakes and/or swerving whenever a hand went up from the kerbside (which is actually legal for the fuckers to do these days; it is up to the other motorists to expect them to be erratic) and, of course, the ever popular pulling out in front of or across us that every type of selfish motorist is prone to do. As time went on and I was under more and more pressure making more money, I developed less tolerance for motorists. My reaction went from none to beeps to verbal abuse and then elevated to kicking their cars and sometimes, all out war.

I’m not going to pretend that couriers don’t react more negatively than most on the road to delays, but what are people to expect? Couriers are called for urgent dispatches only. Couriers have to be loaded up by the base controller to make money, which adds time to the completion of the work, which makes people ring the base with queries, which increases the pressure and decreases the tolerance with delays. It’s all a very delicate and a time sensitive balancing act for the base controller: the more work the courier has dispatched to him, the more crap he has to take from his clients, but if he doesn’t load them up they make less money, and if his couriers don’t make good money, he is sure to incur their wrath and possibly even lose them to other courier companies, which are always sniffing around the top earners. Base controllers have to dispatch lots of work to their top earners, but the top earners have to get the job done damn fast.

“Get there fast; tolerate no delays.” John quoted to me one day as he rushed from the base with me rushing in. No other six words summed up our job so accurately. If you braked every time some gobshite stepped off the path in front of you it would not be long before that would be reflected in your earnings.

“Beep and rev, pedestrians don’t have tax discs tattooed on their arses – it’s our road!” John also told me this.

Up until relatively recently any vehicle that hit a pedestrian was deemed to be in the wrong. Pedestrians are chancing bastards at the best of times, but with the law on their side it must have been a nightmare for the lads. I heard many old-days stories about couriers having to get up off the road – despite injuries – get their bikes kick-started and get the fuck out of Dodge after knocking down pedestrians that had appeared from nowhere or run between buses etc.

Possibly under pressure from insurance companies, the law had been rightly amended to make pedestrians become more aware of the dangers while they were on the tarmac. Though a step in the right direction, I believe that the law should have gone one step further again and made it an offence to cross the road anywhere except pedestrian crossings, like the jaywalking laws in the States.

Shay told us that he made his kids imagine that there were hungry lions running around the roads looking for children to kill and eat. The eldest of the three told him that that was silly, giving his father his cue to emphasise the real message of the exercise.

“Everything on the roads is much more likely to kill you than a hungry lion on the loose would be if you don’t watch, listen and be aware of what’s goin’ on on the road.” He smiled when he told us about the youngest always mumbling “look out for the lions” to herself when approaching a pedestrian crossing, which she always used because the stripey bit confused the lions.

The fact about full time driving is that each incident has its own effect on an already taut nervous system, every negative incident tightening the nerves more and more, like a further turn on an already over wound spring, until finally it snaps.

Road rage snaps are scary things - the most frightening thing about them being the monster within. As anger explosions became more and more frequent with me the effects worsened, bringing me closer and closer to following through on my first instinct, which was usually to drag the offending motorist from his car and kick the crap out of him.