Anagram Time!

OK - given the weekend that's in it and the fact I'm from Dublin - rearrange the following to reveal what I will actually be saying, or rather, singing, along with fifty thousand others tomorrow afternoon? (4,2,3,4,2,4).

Answer appears below!

But did they come on? Not  a chance!

If the Sky Falls!

A natural concern of my mine is that if the digital world ever breaks down only an elite few people will be able to fix things - the rest of us won't have a clue. It's all very fine that, say, a sailor no longer needs a sextant to read the stars and thus know his location but what if his sat-nav blew a fuse or fell from the sky? Well, it would be hello fishies for him and his crew, I'd wager! Same with all else.

For every analog thing there is now a digital alternative which renders the original technology, and thus the skill required to use it, redundant. But what happens if a cosmic storm causes the new world order to go out-of-order? How can we fall back on the analog equivalent to get us out of the hole if the skills are gone?

They say there is no-one on this earth who could accurately rebuild any of the civic buildings that were erected only a couple of hundred years ago - no one on the planet has the skills to do it now. If things go on as they are digitally then my bet is that in fifty years there will be no one left on earth with the skills to even fix a puncture.

That's why in my own corner of the world, the wardrobe through which I enter cyberspace, i.e. my office - I refuse to give up on my analogue friends, the ones that have stood me in good stead since I started out, completing exemplary tasks for me with little complaint. I'm sticking with them as ye never know what might happen.

So, take a bow please ... my transistor radio; my filofax; my abacus; my pen and ink; my notebooks; my LPs; my sextant; my video cassettes; my magnifying glass; my candelabra; my ukulele  ... ba dum dum 'n'... my scythe and my thresher; my whiteboard and markers; my books; my windy clock; my plus fours; my WD-40 ... annnnd ... my newspaper!

So there - a  victory for all things analog, though, I admit, I wouldn't have been able to tell you about them were it not for the Wi-fi router that connects my cordless PC to the world! Doh!

Eh ...it's ... it's the principle!

Stand Back, Aesop!

Ye might recall that we were talking about ancient fables only recently on this here blog but a modern day one was put across my path on Twitter yesterday and is certainly worth a read. Indeed, once I'd read it, all I could really say was - Aesop, eat your heart out! To wit:

"An old Italian gentleman lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden but it was very difficult work as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Dear Vincent. I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days. Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Papa. Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried. Love, Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding anybody. They apologised to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Papa. Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances. Love you, Vinnie."

Now, go on now and have a nice day!

(Thanks to Jonny Geller for posting and Declan Burke for re-tweeting)

"Only two things that money can't buy - that's true love and home grown tomay-toes."

Ten Things We Didn't Know Last Week - #2

Been a couple of days since the last post, the reason for the slackery being ... ukuleles. Always ukuleles! But the Hooley is over for another year so it's time to get back to normal and to catch up on all those vitally important research findings that I've been missing and have missed. Such things as:

• The reason people gossip - which is because they feel that being in the know raises their reputation among their peers.
• Or the fact that men who walk or take a bus to work are, on average, a half a stone lighter than men who drive.
• Or the fact that women believe they look five years younger than their actual age, according to research by Lancôme.
• Or that readers of paperback books are more likely to recall a book's storyline than those who use electronic devices. 
• Or that the novel Trainspotting was more powerful in the fight against drugs than any warning from the UK's Chief Medical Officer.
• Or that, contrary to folklore, magpies are not attracted to shiny objects but are afraid of them.
• Or the fact that before the white man arrived in America there were an estimated 5 billion Passenger Pigeons there but by 1914 the species was extinct.
• Or the news that Chinese pilots have been told to ditch their regional accents or face losing their jobs.
• Or the revelation that sun-cream which washes off when people jump into the sea is poisonous to plankton ...
• unlike urinating in the sea, which is actually good for marine life - though probably not for other bathers!

More stuff to put in yizzer pipes and smoke, with the exception of that last one of course!

More tomorrow ...

Well I'll be darned!

Me, Myself and Uke!

In honour of this weekend's Ukulele Hooley Festival which takes place in Dun Laoghaire and in a manner quite uncharacteristic of The Dualist in my story, I decided that rather than be in two places at the one time that I would, today, be in one place at the one time but that I'd be there twice - if ye know what I mean! So I brought both my ukuleles with both my mes and we've decided to sing a little song for y'all! It's not often we get the chance to jam together after all! Hope you enjoy.

More in a couple of days ... 

Wonders of science!

From the Puzzle Factory ...

When the mind draws a blank, as it often does here in Bloggerville, it's good to be able to revert to other blank things to get us out of the windy space wherein we do find ourselves! So here is an easy peasy Dualist crossword to help you through your coffee break. But of course we're not scientific enough here to allow you to complete it online simply by tapping the answers into the boxes on the screen. Oh no, nothing so flash. I'm afraid you'll just have to print it out and fill it in by, God forbid, hand! But sure have a crack at it anyway and see how far you get. When you're done take a snap of it and post it below and who knows you could be the lucky winner of a FREE thingammyjig or such like. Let's say, yeah, another pint of Tuborg in the Beggar's Bush with me sitting beside you stopwatch in hand. Yeah that sounds good. So gwan now folks, get a cross addressin'!

More amárach ...

Simplex schmimplex!

One pint of Tuborg a commmmin' up!

Bit of a Giraffe!

There was a piece about comedians telling jokes in The Daily Telegraph yesterday which distracted me for a good half hour. I chuckled at some more than others and to save you the click and scroll here are my favourites.

• 'I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.' - Spike Milligan
• 'The wife’s mother said: ‘When you’re dead, I’ll dance on your grave. I said: ‘Good. I’m being buried at sea.’ - Les Dawson
• 'Room service? Send up a larger room.'  - Groucho Marx 
• 'The worst two Winters of the 20th century . . . Mike and Bernie.'  - Victor Borges 
• 'The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.' - Jay Leno
• 'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.' - Benny Hill 
• 'When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather did – in his sleep. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.' - Bob Monkhouse 
• 'First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.' - Steve Martin 
• 'She said she was approaching forty, and I couldn't help wondering from what direction.' - Bob Hope

Still laughing at the Bob Monkhouse one! To see all 100 of the blighters, clickety-click here.

Bob, gagmeister supreme!

The Jogi Blog!

Back at the desk after a few weeks in the sun. Indeed, it was a very nice break and I had a really nice time seeing the sights, scratching the bites, sampling the delights, and meeting some very interesting people along the way - the most unlikely and uplifting being the chap below! I reckon this is probably the closest I'll ever get to someone whose hands have been on the World Cup. Funny the people you meet while you queue for a pizza!

Meanwhile, the flat line on my 'activity graph' here tells me that a few gremlins spannered their way into the ole blogworks while I was away as several of the posts I had scheduled to appear went way down south and several of the ones I'd intended to share on the various social networks decided instead to sulk and stick to themselves. Naturally it was all mea culpa - I guess I'm still feeling my way round Blogger's badlands here with my size twelve flat feet. That said, if you want to discover what I'd intended for you to see while I was away - all you gotta do is scroll backwards in time! In particular, if you are interested in reading the first five chapters of my book, The Dualist, the reason this blog exists, and which I published over five consecutive days beginning August 10th, just click here. 

Or if you are just curious to know what it was that Herr Loew und Ich were actually talking about - well, all I can say is ...

More tomorrow ... 

Horse and Jogi!

Birthday Wishes for Nabokov's Young Lady

Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita was published in the United States on this day in 1958. (It appeared a year later in the UK having been banned up to then). Unsurprisingly, given its theme, the book courted controversy from the very moment it was published (originally in France in 1955) and it was this controversy which prompted Nabokov to include an afterword in the US version of the book where he strongly refuted claims that it was either lewd or anti-American. He also insisted that his detractors based their criticisms not on his treatment of the theme but rather on the theme itself - which, he claimed was completely taboo at the time. Nabokov also said that, despite the fictional John Ray Jr.'s claim made in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story and he added that it was childish to study a work of fiction to gain information about a country, a social class or an author. Frankly, he was having none of it. Indeed in 1962 he told the BBC that Lolita was a special favorite of his. "It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real." The book is regularly listed in polls of the best novels ever written with a recent Modern Library poll ranking it in 4th place below Ulysses, The Great Gatsby and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Lolita - Nabokov said there was no moral to the story.

Anyone for Ukulele - Take the Quiz!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Fantastic Voyages ...

On August 10th 1519 Ferdinand Magellan's five ships set sail from Seville on their mission to circumnavigate the globe but Magellan was killed in the Philippines midway through the expedition so it was his second in command, Juan Sebatián Elcano, who completed the expedition. Nearly 500 years later, on the 10th of August 1990, a NASA space probe named in Magellan's honour reached the planet Venus. I know that linking these two stories is as excessive as the opening scenes of the movie 2000 AD - A Space Odyssey where we see a satellite orbiting the earth immediately after a scene showing prehistoric man throwing his club in the air, but so what! Every once in a while it's probably worthwhile to pause and think about the breathtaking scope of human determination and endeavour and of how, in all likelihood, the latter achievement in this yarn would not have been possible were it not for the former. But I have no idea how Boney M have managed to get in on the act!

More in a couple of days ...

Boney 'M' for Magellan perhaps!

Take a run and jump, Adolf!

Date: Aug 9th 1936. Venue: Berlin, Germany. Occasion: The Summer Olympic Games: Games of the XI Olympiad. Hitler is there still blabbering on about his Aryan master race and all the rest of it. Then this man pops up and gives it to him right between the eyes - the first American to win four medals in one Olympiad - an epic feat eclipsed only by the legend of the man himself. Some victories are eternally sweet.

More tomorrow ...

Sweetest victory!

And in the End ...

No prizes for guessing what I'm talking about here. On this day in 1969 at a zebra crossing in London, the photographer Iain Macmillan took a photo that became one of the most famous album covers in recording history. Oh, alright then ... one teenchy weenchy little clue then.

More tomorrow ...

NW8 one fateful day!

The Dualist - Chapter 5

The temperature changed from warm to bloody freezing in the time it takes to snap a finger. There appears to be no pattern to the weather here any longer. There are no definable seasons. The sun rarely shines in the summer time. The monster rains have drenched its fires. The heavy clouds have, like a gang of kidnappers, put a bag over its head and muscled it from the sky. It is as though the weather is an apt metaphor for our own uncertain times. August had days of winter bleakness. It snowed briefly in July. This October day, the mid-morning was warm and dry until a sudden flow of cold air from the draughty window suffused the room and made turkey skin of my sleeveless arms. I went looking for a jumper and found one in the bottom of the wardrobe. It was an old navy crew neck with felt patches on the elbows and shoulders and a company logo embroidered on the breast. It had been issued to me when I signed up with the Cabs & Couriers radio cab company around the time I first began working as a cab driver. That company went to the wall back in muggy May, another victim of the recession, and cut off a steady supply of lucrative corporate business that I had not yet been able to replace. All that was left was the jumper which didn’t look too stylish anymore, now that the reason for wearing it had disappeared. But when it’s cold, who’s complaining?

I finished my tea and thought about the dead man’s wallet. I went outside and crossed over to the car, clicked it open and sat into the passenger seat. Before I opened the glove compartment, my eye caught sight of my taxi driver’s ID, my tiomanaí deimhinithe, on the dashboard in front of me. It was the first time in a while that I’d noticed it, the plastic sign issued a couple of years or so ago by the Taxi Regulator bearing my ID number E23428, my name and date of birth and my picture, its lo-res passport quality thankfully subduing the varicose rawness of the scar on the right side of my face. To everyone that sits in my cab that photo fully represents the person I am. In its entirety. It is the thing that communicates to them the whole story of my life: Frank Wright, taxi man. Full stop. There is no story or plot or denouement. It is just that. For the twenty or so minutes that I am relevant in the lives of nearly all the people I encounter that is wholly who I am. But to me the picture has no such meaning. To me, it has no meaning at all. It represents the last person I think I am. In fact, it is as though the image details the identity of someone else. Someone who’s being and body I only occupy because with every turn of the steering wheel, every shifting of the gearbox, every step upon the gas, I think I am living someone else’s life and not the one that was intended for me.

I always felt I was made for bigger things.

I still hope for bigger things.

I opened the glove compartment and fumbled my way past a torch, an old cloth, some CDs, a roadmap and an old coffee cup until I retrieved the dead man’s wallet. In broad daylight now I could see it was made of tanned leather which blackened towards the edges with a horseshoe logo on the bottom right hand side of its front. It looked old too as though it had received a lot of wear and tear in its lifetime, although something told me that the steady flow of money had contributed little to its present dilapidated state. I opened it up and went through it again, with no anticipation of finding any cash but in the hope that it might reveal something about the identity of its owner. I searched its pouches and card compartments but there wasn’t much to glean beyond a couple of suburban DART tickets and one Intercity return to Portlaoise. There was a return bus ticket to and from Virginia, Co Cavan and a couple of other scraps of old receipts and betting slips. There was a book of stamps that according to an accompanying receipt had been bought in the post office on Elgin Street earlier on the day I picked him up and it was behind these that I found the card. Bingo! A social welfare ID card bearing the following name and address: Tom Foley, 21 Elgin Place, Dublin 2

Ta-daaah!

The black and white ID picture was of a man, gaunt, charmless, a mouth moulded by meanness, thin lips, the top one shaped like the letter m, weak chin, hard eyes, lustreless hair, stringy and grey, cheeks sunken more from chain smoking than, say, from long distance running. No oil painting. It was hard to tell for sure if the person in the picture was the man in the backseat – but as it was the only ID in his wallet it was good enough for me.

Because now I had a name and address, the means to positively identify this person and bring closure to the whole saga of the dead man in the back of my cab. And to bring this closure sweetly and swiftly, all I had to do was to wait for the Garda woman to call me back and tell her that I had indeed found a wallet with an ID inside it that positively identified their dead guy and that would be the end of things? Nothing more to see here. Time to move on.

But did it turn out that way? It did in its arse. I reckon plain old curiosity played a part. As did boredom. Driving around a desolate town later that morning without as much as a fare in sight was how the two got acquainted. Before I knew it they had me scuttling across the city towards the street where Tom Foley lived.

The sky had taken on the texture of dirty cotton wool and my windscreen was flecked with intermittent spits of cold rain as I turned into Elgin Place, a narrow street lined with red bricked terraced bungalows not far from the place where the Grand Canal meets the Alexander Basin on the south side of town. The odd numbers were on the right I noticed as I slowed to 15 kmph and eased the car towards number 21. A large van outside with the words Staines Removals printed on the back and sides was parked outside the open door of the house and a car parked outside the house directly opposite meant my cab couldn’t get past. So I had to pull up. As I braked I saw two men emerging from inside the hold of the van after loading a rickety chest of drawers into it when one of them noticed me there.  He signalled to me and said something I couldn’t hear.

I lowered the window.

“What’s that?” I said.

 “You the courier, yeah?” he said he said pointing to the logo on the old jumper I had put on earlier.

I can’t remember what I said but whatever it was; he took it as a yes.

 He went on.

 “Yeah, just as well ye showed. We were wondering what to do with the parcel, maybe just fuck it in the skip was what we were going to but … hold on there.”

 “This isTom Foley’s place?” I said.

“Absolutely, pal. Gimme a sec there ‘til I get it.”

Before I could reply he disappeared into the house and came out not more than twenty seconds later brandishing a package.

“Here ye go ...” he said and handed me a heftyish padded envelope which I took from him and put on the passenger seat.

“Thanks indeed, I’ll drop that off right away,” I said, as my chancing arm twitched under my jumper.

I looked at the address and read two words written in blue marker: For Courier. It was addressed to a publishing house in PCP Books in Merrion Square.

 “Nice one, man,” he said.

“So has he moved out or what’s the story?” I asked, pointing to the removals van.

“Kicked out more like,” he said with a laugh.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Didn’t pay the rent. So the landlord sent us over to clear the place. And give him a few slaps first. But I think he was expecting us cos he's legged it anyway.” he said with a laugh.

 “Oh!”

“Ye know yourself, yeah?”

“Yeah … I .. I suppose.”

“Left the place in shite too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So he'll stay away if he's wise.”

I thought about telling him about what had happened to his boss’s tenant only the night before but thought better of it seconds later.

By then my removals man had changed the subject.

“Ye’ll need to get out I suppose,” he said and pointed at the van.

I nodded.

“Hold on and I’ll shift it up a bit,” he said and fished his keys from his pocket.

 “Thanks for that so,” I said, starting up the engine and wondering had I gone temporarily insane.

“No worries, friend. Cheers,” he replied and then got into the van and moved it forward, far enough to allow me drive pass, beeping the horn in thanks as I drove away.

It wasn’t until I turned right at the top of the street that I wondered to myself what the hell had just happened back there. How had such a bizarre sequence of events ended up with me taking possession of something that would, when I look back at it now, alter my life beyond all recognition?

I’ve thought about it many times since and I’ve asked myself that same question over and over again. I never did find the answer and I don’t suppose I ever will.

Not that it matters much anymore.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

So. There you have it folks, the first five chapters of The Dualist. Hope you enjoyed and hopefully it's the start of a process that'll see this here work of mine on a bookshelf in a shop in the not too distant future. Thanks again taking the time to read it.

Normal service will resume tomorrow ...

The Dualist - Chapter 4

I awoke with a thumping drum in my temples and a squealing pig’s rendition of Rossini’s William Tell Overture ringing in my tinnitus ears. Damn phone. I answered it on maybe the fiftieth bar and heard a female voice responding to my hello.

“I’m looking for Mister Right,” it said.

I didn’t recognise the voice but the accent was of the west, deep, almost masculine. It sounded a warning to fools.

“Well I hope you find him,” I said, hoping it was a hoax or a wrong number, an unintentional interlude from the rhythm-less banging in my brain.

She didn’t seem to appreciate my acid wit.

“I am looking for Mr Frank Wright,” she said, testily, making me wonder briefly might I have I touched a raw nerve.

“Speaking,” I said.

“Mr Wright. Were you the taxi driver, the one who reported the incident of the dead man in Phibsboro last evening…?” she asked.

Thoughts flooded back.

“He be me,” I said.

“I am Garda Joan Casey, Phibsboro Garda Station and I have a few questions I need to ask you about yesterday’s incident.”

My first thought was - the wallet. Shit. Surely they couldn’t know about that.

They didn’t.

“We’re having difficulty identifying this man and we were wondering might you be able to shed any light on things for us. I mean for example, might he have said anything to you about who he was.”

That was an easy one.

“No, quite the opposite he didn’t… he barely said one word for the whole journey.”

“I see. Or might he have left anything in your car that might help us put a name to him – an ID, a wallet, a mobile phone or anything like that?”

In my mind’s eye the wallet appeared before me like a big juicy burger.

But I resisted.

“No, nothing. I didn’t find anything at least,” I lied.

The Garda went on.

“It’s just that it’s a bit unusual for a man not to carry any form of ID on his person. In this day and age particularly. Which sort of led us to think he might have left it on the seat or something as he was paying you.”

Pay me… now that was a laugh.

“Pay me? He didn’t pay me at all, Guard. He was dead before he got the chance.”

“Oh, that’s unusual,” the Guard continued.

“You’d be surprised – in this town.”

“Well I’m sorry about that but there’s not much we can do about it as we don’t even know who he is.”

“Yeah, I’ll just have to write this one off.”

“I was wondering if you could check the car again in case there might be something under the seat or on the floor,” she said.

“What, you mean now? I’m only out of bed.”

“Well no, not this minute but at your earliest convenience,” she said and continued, “because we have no idea who he is at the moment and any information at all about him would be a great help.”

“Well I’ll check again just in case.”

“Thank you, Mr Wright.”

“No problem at all.”

After the call, I opened the window to exorcise the bad air in the room and studied the empty bottles. I tried to unsuccessfully to recall what had happened the night before. To a man with a hangover all episodes of the pre-sleep past, of the drunken night before, seem to have occurred about a thousand years ago, so much so that his memory of them is virtually blank the following morning. Questions like “Did I do that?” “Did I say that?” are often real posers for me the next day. There may well be some clarity at the actual time, as the glass was tilting, but all that turns to black once sleep’s curtain falls. It’s as though the Khmer Rouge conducts a slash and burn in the brain and bludgeons and cudgels everything back to the year zero.

I made a cup of tea and a slice of toast and thought about the Garda’s call again and considered my options.

Broadly there were two.

I could give the Garda the wallet and say that I had found it in the back of the car like a normal civic minded person or I could take the safe option, say nothing at all, leave things the way they were and move on as if nothing had happened.

Of course I wasn’t sure what one to take.

Not until I went through the wallet again.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...

The Dualist - Chapter 3

In eager anticipation of untold wealth I opened the wallet as soon as I was safely away from the Gardaí’s prying eyes. And of course … surprise, surprise!

It was empty.

Not as much as a brass farthing, not a red cent in it.

I thought, that jammy fucker!

I opened the glove compartment and threw it into the back, disgusted at the thought of how even a dead man could rob me blind.

The rain had taken hold as I stopped into a Spar on the way home and was drawn towards a 12 inch ham and cheese pizza on account of the big ‘Only €2.99’ sticker emblazoned on the front of the box and a bottle of Campari and a bottle of 'no brand' vodka that I knew was neither cheap nor good but always did the job.

I drove home nodding my head to the frenetic rhythm of some tune whose name I didn’t know but which seemed to be playing on every station I switched to. I parked the car under a street lamp across the road from my shabby little rat flat and hoped it would escape the notice of the nearby gang of bored corner boys who were looking for something to vandalise.

Inside, I poured a Campari, topped it up with vodka and knocked back a hefty draft. I heated the pizza and set about trying to eat it without having the hot melted cheese stick to and burn the roof of my mouth. One bite in and I felt the familiar burn as the hot melted cheese stuck to the roof of my mouth. I poured another drink and chewed my way through the evening news. According to the man, Ireland remained fucked. I watched the weather. According to the woman, Ireland would remain cold, grey and sodden. I switched stations for a while and saw nothing of interest so I switched off the set altogether. I thought about the day just gone for a bit and concluded that apart from the dead man and the wallet it hadn’t been up to much. I poured another drink. And maybe another after that, I can’t remember or care less come to think of it.

My eyelids grew gradually heavier as I sat on the sofa and considered the pointlessness of such a complex evolutionary concept as a man sprawled on a couch and waited for the night to fade away to nothing just like the thousands of nights that went before it.

I remember dreaming of winning something but I can’t recall what – a medal, some money, a reprieve perhaps. God only knew.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...

The Dualist - Chapter 2

A dead man is a dead man and unless he’s Lazarus (and you’re God) then nothing is going to change that. But appearances need to be kept up. People have to make a fuss to turn a buck these days and a lot of the time that simply involves making it look as though they are busy. That’s why the ambulance load of rubber gloved paramedics fizzed about all-business in the rainy rush hour with their clipboards and stretchers, drips and syringes, defibrillators and ventilators, blankets and bandages, stethoscopes and tourniquets, potions, lotions, laptops, flashlights, headsets and phones.

But they could’ve spared themselves the trouble.

The chap was already dead as a doornail.

Meanwhile, two chubby boy policemen in oversized hi-vis jackets, laminate ‘Garda’ logos cracked and fading away on their backs, stood guard nearby and took turns looking towards me every so often to check whether it was just their imagination or that I really did have two heads and two left feet. It may be my own imagination but every time I encounter them, or anyone else that exercises authority over me, I get the feeling that they believe I am guilty of whatever it is that shouldn’t have been done. It’s as though they are genetically, institutionally, suspicious of me and my ‘type’, that type being any man with a scar on his face. I suppose, this shouldn’t come as a surprise given that they are paid to be suspicious of the nips and tucks and cuts and grazes and welts and bruises that often come as a consequence of dodgy dealings and unsavoury behaviour. But I can’t honestly say that it doesn’t bother me. Or I try not to allow it at least

Still, standing there, my neurotic mind soon began its race to the prison gates, as a scruff ball of a detective in an old bargain basement anorak, cheap shoes, and some underclass of fart weary flannel trousers came over to me and muttered an introduction, Detective Inspector Barney Mulligan or something. He hovered about me for a while and started firing irritating questions at me as though angling for a quick solution to the case in the form of an admission of guilt from me - his tone implying that simply by my presence I had something to do with the man being dead.

I wasn’t in the mood for any wild accusations though.

“Woh, woh, woh,” I said. “Before ye even start.”

He looked at me.

I went on.

“I’ve never seen the man before in my life before today, I just picked him up in my taxi and he collapsed when he got out of it. That’s what happened.”

I half expected him to pose some outrageous, incriminating question but to my surprise, he woh-wohed as instructed, as though somehow my retort had defeated him – as though he was too jaded to argue with me. His tone changed and he became more civil, courteous even or perhaps despondent was the word. He asked me a couple more questions about where the guy was picked up and where he was left off. I told him straight and he penned the answers into his notebook. Then he asked me was there anything about him, anything unusual about him, about his look or demeanour, that in hindsight you could say might have led to this? Was he drinking or on drugs or medication that I could tell? I said I couldn’t be sure but that he looked sick from the moment he got into the cab. He scratched down bits and pieces of my answers and asked me for a number where I could be contacted and that a Garda or two would call to me to take a more detailed statement if that was okay by me.

Which it was.

Then he said thanks and disappeared over to have a word with the paramedics to see might they have anything to add but by then I could tell that he was convinced that this was an accident rather than a crime. A man had died in a taxi, or just outside one, and that was all there was to it. Make sure that procedures were adhered to, that the right personnel were called to the scene, that the time of death was recorded, that any next-of-kin were notified and that the media were briefed if they were interested and that would be the end of that.

Nothing more to see here ladies and gentlemen.

Which was fine by me too.

Routine and unfortunate deaths in taxis are all very fine and the Guards are welcome to investigate them in whatever way they want. The crux of the issue however, for me at the time, was the not insignificant matter of an unpaid fare to recoup. Before he’d left the scene, I had told the Detective about this but the gravity of the situation, my situation, didn’t really register with him. It didn’t register with him that this dead old codger had effectively done a runner on me (albeit to the other side), leaving me to carry the expense. All fifteen euro of it. That he had in a sense committed a crime of his own that should be investigated.

I am a working man after all and with twenty thousand cabs in operation in this town, a cab for every man, woman and child in the place, it sometimes seems, it’s hard to make ends meet. So when a fare does come along, it counts. Every penny counts and I don’t work for nothing.  For me there is no sense in accepting a fare unless I am going to get paid. I am making perfect sense here. In bad times like these even death is not a good enough excuse for not paying your bills. There are no excuses at all for that. The man in my back seat was alive (though hardly well) when the journey was completed. He was at his destination before he died. Now I don’t mean to split hairs here but I took him to where he wanted to go and he was alive when we got there. That means a contract was agreed.

I kept my side of the bargain.

But none of that registered with the policeman. It didn’t matter to him. Not a whit.

But it registered with me.

Lex talionis, an eye for an eye, you see? Man steal from you, you take from him. Law of the Israelites, law of the jungle, law of the streets. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you have to claim what belongs to you using the most suitable means at your disposal. For some it’s gavels and wigs, for others it's fists and threats, for more again it's baseball bats and sawn-offs. But when I have to get what is mine in this here world full of scammers and scumbags and blackguards and knaves, I like to rely on two things.

My sleight of hand.

And my chancing arm.

So it was a good job, deft expert that I am, that I’d earlier used both of these talents to pick the man’s wallet as he lay there dead on the street.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...

The Dualist - Chapter 1

According to the international language of signs, the raised hand meant I was in business. Last fare of the day.

I threw him a glance through the wet windscreen as I pulled up by the kerb, signalled for him to get in and watched him pull the handle of the back door.

“Phibsboro,” he just about managed to say as he plonked himself on to the seat and the door clunked closed.

“Right to be,” I said, put the car in gear and pulled out into the carnage of the Dublin mid-evening rush-hour.

“Dirty old day?” I added cheerily as I reminded him to fasten his belt. I offer service with a smile.

He didn’t reply.

Fucken oddball.

Apart from a couple of grunts from him to okay the route I planned to take he remained silent, distracted. I could have told him we would be going via Mars and it would have made no difference. Still, despondency in a fare always presents an opportunity for me to slow the cab down a little, get stuck behind a parked van, anticipate red lights and the like. Here a cent, there a cent, everywhere a cent, cent. They’re as good in my pocket as in theirs after all. And it all adds up.

I drove on savouring the silence for as long as I could. When I caught a glimpse of him in the rear-view mirror a little later on, this time on O’Connell Street, he looked as though he had aged by ten years. I was nearly going to ask him was he alright but instead I just turned the radio up and heard the presenter confirm that I should be avoiding Phibsboro like the plague at this time of the day. But I didn’t mind. Driving through glue has its benefits.

Chi-ching!

It took me nearly half an hour to travel the couple of miles to our destination and the man in the backseat hadn’t got any better looking in the meantime. He looked worse more like. By the time I’d reached the entrance to the Shopping Centre in Phibsboro, his thin face had lost all of its colour and beads of sweat had appeared on his brow. His breath had become slower and more difficult.

“Here,” he coughed when I asked him where exactly he wanted to get out.

I stopped there, about ten yards from here.

The meter was rounding up to 15 Euros as I was putting on the handbrake and popping open the cashbox.

“That’s fifteen euro please,” I said but by then he already had the door open and the first of his feet was landing on the pavement.

No reply.

“That’s fifteen euro please,” I repeated a little clearer and louder.

Again, nothing.

I don’t know about you but to me this sort of silence is just plain rude.

By the time I’d fully turned around to look him in the eye, he was out of the car and on the pavement. A couple of seconds later I was out of the car and on the pavement too. I felt a serious confrontation coming on. I run a strict no fare dodgers rule after all and carry a taser gun to enforce it. But before I could raise a finger to accost him or manage another word of reprimand, he hit the ground with a bang and was stretched out on his back, eyes rolling in his head, the rain wetting his face.

At first, all I could do was stare at him as he lay there going through his motions of ticks and gasps and flicks and twitches but eventually I knelt down and shook him by the shoulder to try and wake him up or revive him or do something.

It didn’t do much good.

“Fuck,” I thought and I dug into my shirt pocket and pulled out my phone and dialled 999. I ordered up an ambulance for main course with some Gardaí on the side from the menu of emergency services. As I hung up, I shouted to some passers-by to stop and help as I ran and got a dirty old blanket and an old newspaper from the boot of the car. One or two stopped but all they really did was stare at the man as he lay there on the ground.

I returned with the blanket and placed it over him. I made a makeshift cushion by crumpling the newspaper and putting it behind his head. As he lay there in the lap of luxury, I asked him again was he alright.

He said nothing.

This time his silence no longer angered me or suggested to me that he, the man who’d just sat for half an hour in the back seat of my cab, was either odd or distracted or even rude.

No. It just told me he was dead.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...

Holidays are here again!

The Dualist will be doing a disappearing act later today as that time has come for us to make the annual pilgrimage to the Mediterranean. We'll be gone for a fortnight and the plan is to inhale a ray or two while catching up with what's still to be read on the bookshelf and simultaneously getting re-acquainted with the local cuisine, the vini locale and the local lingo. Can't wait.

But seeing as I'll be away off foreign - I think it would be a good idea to reveal a little of the book to you all in my absence. So for the next five days starting tomorrow I am going to post the first five chapters of the tome - to give you a feel for what it's about. Naturally, I hope you enjoy them and your comments will be as ever very welcome.

Following the posting of the chapters there will be a few more intermittent posts from my ethereal self, the digital me, until round about August 18 or 19th when I expect to be back at my desk again and whereby normal service will resume.

For now though it's Buona vacanza folks and happy holidays to y'all!

Get me to a beach!