Authors: Kevin Brennan
There it was anyway, a metallic blue Toyota Starlet, at the last exit, just when I was far enough away for the driver to assume that it would be safe to pull out but going so fast that it wasn’t. The car pulled out. I had eased off the throttle as soon as I had seen the front of the car, but I still had to brake hard to avoid smashing into it. I braked too hard. The front wheel lost its grip.
The combination of fear, doom and adrenalin became one sickening instantaneous overdose as my reactions kicked in. Off with the brakes, straighten the bike, hard on the back brake, more gradual application of the front ones.
Oh, God, I’m gonna hit! I thought, slamming down through the gears, firmer on the front, fighting an impulse to jump off the bike.
“This is gonna hurt!” I mumbled as the back wheel skidded, having to wrench the bars to compensate. The front brake was now almost on full, but the tyre held firm. “But not that
much!”
I came to a stop with a tiny bump of my front tyre against her bumper. I was instantly filled with relief! Thank God for good rubber. After making a quick mental note to never, ever skimp on tyres, the anger overcame me. It erupted from the pit of my stomach, as if from a cesspool of malice that had been festering all day, as misery had been heaped upon it since my eyes had opened that morning.
Just as a volcano is the release of built up pressure along an available channel, my malevolence erupted over this incident. I’m sure if it was a dry sunny day and the work had been going well for me I might have just waved the car on.
It wasn’t, it hadn’t and I didn’t.
The side stand went down with an angry stomp of the already soaking wet boot. The motion of leaning the bike onto the stand was continued as an angry dismount culminating in an over exaggerated swinging of the other boot over the petrol tank (way over the petrol tank actually). Then I stomped past my front wheel and along the car as the tinted window rolled down. My boiling blood seemed to relish the fact there was going to be damage done here.
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at…mother?”
“I did not bring up you to scream at people in such a foul manner, Sean Flanagan, and how bloody fast were you going there?”
The inner volcanic eruption came to an abrupt end. Between the shock of realising that the driver was my mother - in the new car that she had told me on the phone several times that she had bought herself as she was nagging me for not visiting her often enough - and having invoked more anger in her than I had for many years, I was instantly transformed from aggressor to defender.
“You shouldn’t have pulled out.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I should or shouldn’t do! Sean Patrick Flanagan you were driving like a bloody lunatic on a wet road past a shopping centre. Do you want to get killed? Am I going to have to bury you some day?”
The full name, the stark image and the chokingly emotional final couple of words were game. Set and match.
“Sorry Mother.”
“So you bloody well should be. My new car better not be damaged.”
“Just rubbed some dust off your bumper with my tyre.”
“You’d better relax your driving and your attitude, mister!” she warned as she put her car into gear “And get a proper job for God’s sake - use your degree!” she yelled out the window as she pulled away, leaving me standing there totally depleted in the middle of the road, with traffic I had sped past moments earlier now having to slow down to manoeuvre past me.
From that day onwards my first line of defence against the inner demons of my own rage was always the line, “That could be your mother driving that car, Sean.”
This line of defence proved very effective at controlling myself in road rage situations and I managed to drive away from most confrontations over the Christmas season of 1998.
Occasionally, I wasn’t even angry with myself for “letting the dickhead get away with it” and actually managed to let the pride in the correct handling of things overrule all of the normal negative crap involved in road rage. In ways it genuinely did feel good to take a higher moral ground stance and any time I did drive away instead of reacting negatively, I always did so assuring myself that anger shortened people’s lives immensely and that I was doing myself a huge favour by not letting it get a grip on me.
“What d’ye reckon on that?”
“Jaysus, that’s a mad looking lid.”
“From the States. It’s a Simpson.”
“Simpson ey?”
“Good Monty Byrne, man!”
“Excellent!”
“This is goin’ to be me away lid, once I get it painted up. Ye know me mate, Stef, up in Navan?”
“The mad buzzer that was here for New Year’s?”
“That’s him, ye know that he paints lids an’ bikes an ‘ all..”
“Does he?”
“Yeah…it was him that did Leo’s Shoei.”
“Jaysus, that’s a beautiful job. I was only admirin’ it the other day. Absolutely flawless. The same bloke that did Gizzard’s Firestorm, yeah? I’d no idea that he was the joker I’d met.”
“I know. Y’ed think he was just a mad waster the way he goes on, bu’ he’s one hell of an artist. And he’s very precise and professional with the finish on every job he does.”
“You can say that again.”
“See this bit over the mouth? Stef is gonna paint a big snarl
ing animal gob on that, with huge pointy fangs, like a monster, an’ then a big fleshy, boney, skull around the rest of it. The visor will be the eyes of the beast.”
“That’s one small fuckin’ visor, man!”
“For sure, and see the shape of i’ – that’s perfect for monster eyes!”
“Not so good for visibility, though!”
“I know – these lads were designed for drag racin’. They’re actually illegal on the roads in the States.”
“What about over here?”
“Protective headgear is all the law says. This is protective headgear.”
“Ye’d want to be careful drivin’ with that on so.”
“Like I said, it’s me away lid, an’ when we go away we go fast an’ strai’, as ye know, but point taken abou’ drivin’ roun’ Dublin wearin’ i’. When I do it’ll be extra mirrors an’ head movements, so don’ be worryin’ yerself, kiddo. Here, feel the weight of it.”
“Jaysus, that’s heavy man.”
“Heavy and solid - great protection in high speed crashes.”
“Bet it’s hard on the neck though.”
“Sure haven’t I got a neck like a jockey’s bollocks anyway?”
“Ye can say that again man.”
“I just can’t wait to see it after Stef has worked his magic on it.’
“Sounds good, man, can’t wait meself.”
It’s usually bad base controlling to have two couriers going the same direction on the same stretch of road outside the greater city area, so my first instinct when Vinno sped past me on the Blade at the start of the Tallaght by-pass in Templeogue that dry February afternoon was to curse Aidan.
It took only a second to remember that Vinno had been diverted on his way up high west to pick up in O’Connors Solicitors in Templeogue going to Cookstown industrial estate in Tallaght, a job that couldn’t be dispatched to me because I had two directs on board for Knocklyon and Rathfarnham as well as the Templeogue I had just dropped and two other Rathfarnhams. Aidan had cajoled me into taking a run into the wasteland (work
wise) of Rathfarnham because the directs were worth so much to me, the other three were handy and by promising to hold work in Sandyford for me for after I had dropped the last Rathfarnham to get me a juicy high south run coming in. I didn’t mind at all though, of course, I made a lot of noise about him owing me some gravy for looking after these bummers for him. I found it refreshing to get a run along a lesser travelled route occasionally, though God forbid that my base controller would ever know it. That’s exactly the sort of attitude that would have a courier on top of his “ask him to cover the stingers” list.
Vinno was on the Blade because the cam chain had finally packed in on the XBR, after giving him plenty of warning – nearly a year in fact and the bulk of 40,000 miles – in the form of increasingly loud knocking. It was actually a tribute to the engine that it lasted so long. I believe that the only reason Vinno left it unsorted was that it was a great conversation point.
“I see – or actually hear – that ye haven’t bothered yer bollix takin’ care o’ tha’ cam chain yet!”
“Ah, sure it’s grand.”
“That poor bike.”
“It owes me nuttin’!”
“You owe it a bit of TLC!”
“Wouldn’t do to spoil the machine.”
Never mind your test track, Mr Honda, send your commuter bikes over to Dublin to the full time open throttle merchants. If the machine survives them, it’ll survive anyone!
When the cam chain did go, it didn’t even do any damage to the engine. This was another tribute to the quality of the machine. Vinno just had to work on the Blade for a few days while the lads in the Gem Workshop scored him another cam chain. I think he enjoyed putting the beast to work every now and then, despite his complaining about working out of a bag instead of the box and the amount of juice he was using.
I wasn’t quite at full throttle when Vinno sped past me. I had actually eased off a little when I spotted the lights of a sports bike coming up fast, but when I realised that it was my best friend, landlord and mentor that passed me, the throttle was
instantly wrenched to the max.
I have heard couriers refer to it as “the quickening” when describing our attitude when we come across each other in motion. Outside observers might describe it simply as lunatics on bikes racing against each other in a very dangerous manner, but there’s much more to it than that. There is an element of the dice involved, of course, but it’s more about people with skills in the same field displaying these skills to those who would appreciate them the most.
Among couriers there is also the factor of pecking order. In an occupation where your wages depend on your ability to get through traffic quickly it is a real feather in your cap to out-drive a higher earner than yourself. Doing so, and more importantly, mouthing about it within earshot of your base controller, could really progress a courier’s standing in his job. This, of course, made it vital for one to out-drive lower earners. Not forgetting the sheer and absolute buzz about the whole thing.
Episodes were constantly being relived by couriers the next time they met, often days later and all the better if there were more couriers present to witness it, who would more than likely join in with their own recantations to generate multi-faceted witty banter, with the faster ones proclaiming to be slower for the sheer comedy of it, with perhaps a tiny sprinkling of modesty involved. I find this unique to couriers.
“Ye were really goin’ for it there the other day along the Navan road.”
“Not at all. Jus’ ploddin’ along.”
“One fuckin’ hell of a plod!”
“Tha’ lad’s a rie fuckin’ hero, man. Ye shoulda seen him comin’ over Lesson Street Bridge las’ week. Had to switch ‘is fuckin’ radio over to air traffic control ‘e did!”
“D’ye hear the fuckin’ one and only flyer?”
“Me? Slow Joe himself!”
“Slow, me bollix! I nearly went on me fuckin’ snot tryin’ to keep up with ye in Sandyford tha’ time.”
“That’s jus’ ‘cos you’re too fuckin’ mean to get good rubber on yer wheels, man!”
“If new battleaxes aren’t good rubber I don’t know wha’ fuckin’ is!”
“New to you – ye goh them second hand off tha’ fuckin’ cowboy in Coolock. They were squarer than a box full of boxes and had more fuckin’ plugs than a kettle factory.”
“Nuttin wrong wi’ them tyres! I wouldn’t trust any rubber as much as you do on them greasy fuckin’ roads in Sandyford.”
“I have plenty of margin for error everywhere I drive.”
“Fuckin’ must have a guardian angel stoppin’ yer tyres from steppin’ ou’ the way you fling tha’ machine around.”
“I do – the guardian angel of money spent on tyres!”
I hadn’t got a hope of catching up with Vinno on the Blade. I suppose I was nailing my machine as fast as it would go for a number of reasons. If he made a mistake or got blocked in or had a gap closed on him, I might have briefly come close to him. I longed to have the capability to move at the speed he was moving at and that longing caused me to make my machine go as close to that speed as possible.
I hated to be overtaken, being such an egomaniac about how fast I could drive and the acceleration was a result of my inner begrudgery after the fact. I also would have wanted to remain visible in his mirrors up to the Spawell roundabout, when I would be turning left with him either going straight or turning right, depending on the work he had on board and how it was prioritised. This decision would have been borne out of a yearning for recognition from an admired mentor, a drive similar to that which sends a schoolboy’s hand shooting upwards when one of his favoured teachers asks the class a question. Maybe if I stayed close enough there would be a gratifying comment the next time we met.
“Ye fairly nailed it after me comin’ up to the Spawell roundabout earlier!” would have been a great reward.