Gurriers (96 page)

At the end of my outburst I was breathless, watery-eyed and extremely sore (I had stupidly stomped my right foot at one stage to emphasise a point). I considered myself to be throwing away my job, which curiously brought back a flood of memories about the last job I had thrown away and why.

I was surprised to be spoken to in a soft voice instead of be
ing fired. “Look, Sean, you’re a good courier and I don’t want to lose you, but that sort of behaviour is unacceptable on any business premises. Why don’t you just calm down and carry on as normal for now and we’ll see how we all feel on Monday. Okay?”

“I’m being sent to Blanch’, that’s not normal.”

“Aidan is one hundred per cent in charge of the runs. Maybe just go this once and then start afresh with him also.”

“And couriers aren’t automatically in the wrong just because somebody complains, you know!”

“That’s exactly what Vinno used to say. We all miss him too, Sean.”

“Yeah well…yeah.okay.”

A visit to the toilet incorporating many splashes of water had me almost back to normal by the time I hit the hatch.

O’Connell Street and the IFSC had both been on looking for me, so Aidan had to get me over to D1 ASAP. He also dispatched a Seville Place coming back to Hatch Street, lining me up for lunch in D2 with just the Blanch on board.

It was ten past one when I got back to the base with a ham salad roll, a packet of crisps, a Snickers and a pint of milk. Ray, John and Charlie where sitting at the table, Gerry was at the map and Dolores was just leaving the hatch, with a run going north for lunch at home. It all seemed so normal, but it wasn’t normal. How could it be? Vinno would never be here again.

Once again entering a building that I associated with Vinno brought flashbacks of him being there during happier times. Once again, the happy memory was viciously and cruelly replaced with the image of him dying on that cursed roundabout. Once again I scorned myself for thinking that I knew what loss was before that day and the wave of grief stopped me dead in my tracks. I needed a friend to talk to. I needed Vinno.

Another wave of grief accompanied the realisation that I would never again speak to the best friend that I ever had, leaving me just standing there in the middle of the room, watery-eyed with a lump in my throat and my knees weakening by the
second.

“Brother Sean, sit yourself down here beside me and let us eat together.”

“Th- Thanks John. I er will. Yep.”

“What’s the story, Shy Boy? Hear ye had a bit of a knock earlier.”

“Just a tap, Ray.”

“No bother to our kid. Hard as, Sean, yeah?”

“You said it, Charlie.”

“We’re just after gettin’ a number together, man. D’ye wanna come ou’ for a smoke?”

“Thanks Ray, bu’ I’m starvin’ I’ll get one myself after I get this lot into me.”

“Charlie?”

“Does the pope shite in the woods? C’mon, little man. Gerry, John?”

“Sure I’ll have a toot before I head west.”

“Why thank you for such a kind offer, but for now I’m going to eat with Brother Sean. You three enjoy.”

“Fair enough, wait for me, fat man.”

“You don’t appear to be your usual effervescent self today, Brother Sean.”

“I feel like I’m cracking up, John. All day I’ve been either in a blind rage or about to burst into fuckin’ tears. I’ve done thousands of quid’s worth of damage to people’s cars and phones. I drove up onto a footpath after a lecturer in UCD and I swear to God, man, I intended to mow him down. I’ve nearly been fired for deliberately sending an open packet of biscuits flying all over the radio reception in RTE-”

“What kind of biscuits?”

“What?”

“What particular biscuits did you render airborne, Brother Sean?”

“Ginger nuts.”

“Easily forgivable, my friend. Go easy on yourself. Now, these people whose property you damaged, they were all ran
dom innocent victims?”

“No, no. Every one of them was a dickhead and they all nearly crashed into me while being dickheads.”

“Was the lecturer innocent?”

“The gobshite walked onto the road right in front of me and then stuck his fingers up at me for beeping at him.”

“And the cyclists?”

“The first one shot out onto the road between two buses in UCD; the second one was blocking the whole road while she weaved her fat arse uphill.”

“Did you injure anybody today?”

“No.”

“Thinking about Vinno lots?”

“Constantly. I- I saw his ghost today in Milltown.”

“There’s at least five black XBRs on the circuit and three of them wear black Aria helmets. It’s no surprise that so many of us see the ghost of our Number One so often. Add all of this to the after effects of the crash and-”

“And the rain!”

“Indeed; rain never helps. You are definitely in the throes of courier breakdown, brother Sean, but you appear to be dealing with it very well, considering.”

“Come on!”

“I had a stranger die in front of me many years ago. I didn’t know him, I didn’t see the crash. I arrived just afterwards. I was the only courier there. I knelt beside him, told him not to worry about anything, that I would contact his base and have his bike taken care of for him; all he had to concentrate on was his healing. I had no idea that he had suffered horrendous internal injuries. He looked at me, he smiled and he died.

That young courier’s death affected me deeply. I can only imagine how tough it was for you to be there with Vinno.”

“He…his last words to me were to …to get a different job.”

“Oh dear.”

At this stage there were tears streaming down my face. I felt horrified to be sitting here, in the base at lunchtime, bawling my eyes out.

“You need to hit the facilities, brother Sean and let it all flood out. I’ll make sure that nobody follows you down, so you can make sure to let go completely. Take your own sweet time and come back to us when you’re freshened up.”

“Thanks, John, you’re a star.”

John’s words were like a tonic to me. I was back at the table within 15 minutes, complete with a big fat joint that I had put together during my emotional time out. I wasn’t quite back to normal, but I was a hell of an improvement on the wretch that had come in for lunch.

The punishment run was still crap though. All I got to go with the Blanch was a Parkgate Street, one for Horizon on the Navan Road, a Mulhuddart and another Blanch. Pretty shitty for a Friday afternoon. I was asked to leave my Mulhuddart until last because the Symantec was in so long. That would have added four miles to my route, so I took a chance and dropped Mulhuddart first, it being a straight run from Horizon along the N3.

This meant that I would be coming along Ballycoolin Road from Blanchardstown Road North instead of the more usual approach from Blanchardstown Road South. Consequently, Ballycoolin Industrial Estate and Symantec would be on my left and not on the right hand side that I was accustomed to.

The rain had stopped while I was on lunch and by the time I turned off the Blanchardstown Road North onto Ballycoolin Road, the roads had dried considerably, albeit under a dark and threatening sky.

I was in much better form also. Apart from the rain stopping, the outpouring to John had done me the world of good, my belly was full and I was driving around an area that had no associations with Vinno. I was rarely sent to Blanchardstown, Vinno never was.

There was nothing else on the Ballycoolin Road, so I nailed it. About a mile and a half up the road I caught my first glimpse of a factory on the right hand side. I wound down the throttle and eased the bike to my right in plenty of time to stop before I arrived at the traffic lights ahead, even though they were
green.

The road opened up into two lanes about 40 metres from the lights, one of which was a right turn lane. I indicated and then aimed my machine into this lane despite a niggling feeling that something wasn’t right.

Then a factory on my left hand side caught my eye. Before I even focussed properly on the name on the side of this factory I knew it was Symantec. That’s the danger about working in an area you don’t get sent to very often; the landscape that you think you’re familiar with can be totally different to the previous time that you were in the area. That was the case here.

The last time I had delivered to Symantec it had been the only factory visible from the Ballycoolin Road, with nothing but an open field in front of it. Now there was a factory in front of it, recently built at the back of the Blanchardstown Industrial Park off the Snugborough Road. Not knowing that it had been built coupled with moving in the opposite direction than normal to wrongly convince me that it was Symantec.

Cursing myself, I changed my indicator from right to left, applied more pressure to my brakes and swung the bike to my left, dropping down another gear as I did so. I had no mirror on my left hand side and, in frustration as much as anything else, assumed that I had come up the road so fast without overtaking anything that there couldn’t possibly be anything coming behind me. That was a terrible mistake and so nearly a fatal one.

During my time as a courier I had several crashes and many near misses, all involving huge bursts of adrenalin coupled with weird stuff happening in my head and followed by incomplete memory. I believe in emergency situations the nerves take over the motor functions of the body and that the reactions that come from that don’t all go into the memory, leaving the brain having to join some dots to piece together events after the fact.

In my experiences of the various phenomena involved in emergency situations, I have been able to find some such logical explanation for everything that happened inside my head to save or to minimise the damage done to me, except what hap
pened to me on this Two Crash Day.

As I eased to my left and I know for a fact that I intended to continue along that path due to the absence of any other traffic on the road, something seemed to activate every single alarm bell in my head at the very same instance in an extremely peculiar way. Most peculiar of all was that the warning seemed to originate somewhere outside of my own head. Again, strange stuff happens inside the head in emergency situations, but never, ever like this.

I could feel the urgency and purpose of the warning in the instant that it erupted into my consciousness as real as I have heard every shout that has been shouted at me at close range. Despite the fact that there were no words, the instantaneous massage was crystal clear to me, as if a voice between my helmet and my head suddenly screamed, “LOOK BEHIND YOU!”

Such was the clarity of this sensation that I complied immediately, and there it was. I was about to be hit by a huge six axle articulated lorry, that must have been moving at 60 mph into whose path I had meandered. I nearly shat myself, but my reactions were life-savingly fabulous.

I wrenched my handlebars to the right, dropped down a gear and nailed the throttle almost simultaneously. This meant that when the lorry hit me - and hit me the fucker did in no small way - my bike was moving in such a way and at such an angle that it was knocked to the right, out of the path of the speeding monster. It smashed into the back of my bike so hard, however, that the front wheel came up in the air. And up, and up the machine went with me on it, actually performing a backwards somersault as it was knocked (barely) out of the path of the lorry.

We all know that the best thing to do in most emergency situations is to kick down on the footrests. If you are T-boning something this can get you up and over the front of the bike and, hopefully, also over whatever you are crashing into. If the bike is low-siding or hitting the deck, this kick will get you out from under the machine, thereby minimising the amount of road rash suffered. Most of my compatriots have benefited from employing this tactic (also the reason I and most of mine
dislike any machine with a riding position that has the feet forwards, otherwise this escape is not possible) but none have ever benefited the way that I did this day.

I kicked myself away from the bike when it was upside down, in the middle of a backwards somersault, with me underneath it and the gigantic wheels of the lorry thundering by at speed and inches from my upside-down head. To the day I die I will never forget the terror of the sound of those wheels, so loud when so close and also when so convinced that one’s life is about to be snuffed out.

I landed on my head but thanks to my upside down kick, the bike landed beside me instead of on top of me. As suddenly as it had appeared, the monster was gone. The horrendous noise of its wheels being returned to the normal volume as it thundered away from me.

The force of the collision had catapulted me and my bike forward and now, still convinced that my life was over, I had the displeasure of hearing the sickening crashes, smashes and crunches of my dear machine being smashed to pieces as it somersaulted along the road beside me.

I was also having the shite knocked out of me by the road, for I, too, was somersaulting and then came a merciful stop. Two more horrible, metallic plasticky crunches before what was left of my poor bike came to a halt and then silence.

Battered, bruised and shaken, my first reaction was to get to my feet and walk. I didn’t know where to, I was just up and walking without realising it. Had I not been in shock I would have been marvelling at the fact that I could walk. Or breathe, or see or hear; basically it was a hell of a wonder that I was still alive. Had I realised any later - even by the tiniest fraction of a second – that I was moving in front of a speeding lorry I would have been knocked in front of it and then under it, which would have killed me. Had my reactions been any different or slower I would have been knocked in front of the lorry and then under it which would also have killed me.