Crazy characters

So last night afte a long day of flimmin and flamming about with study and feeling highly unproductive and unsuccesful, with maybe all of 4 hours of real work from 8am-8pm i joined Gammaman and a few others in the Society's favourite watering hole for a few drinks and a good ole chat.


Gammaman being the lucky charasmatic succesful sod that he is, is off to Europe inter-railing with Sherminator and Egyptian Paul. That alone is a hilarious image unto itself so i can imagine there will be quiet a few stories to be envious of when they return.

So Gammaman had several of us there for some drinks before he heads off at the start of next month and it was good couple of hours. I even bought him a round as i owe him for trying to push my study and for my brief lock out from social networking, which i then subverted....


Then i had to dash off to get the bus.

Oddly the LED lightshow WASN'T on Liberty Hall. Either it was broken or not enough people had submitted graphics. Which is a real shame because it's supposed to last a good while as far as i remember. They could easily just play tetris on it on a constant loop!


So i was getting a bus from Busarás at 11pm.

Got there on time. Two coaches sitting there. Neither opened up or moved.

A bus carrying the number i was looking for flew around the back of the station and then disapeared, it looked like it wanted to get into a blocked parking space but then it just fucked off into the night.

So there i was having to wait another 40 minutes for an even slower bus service back home.

The glow of the garda station, the dinging of Trams on the Luas line, and the odd dart and Westerly commuter chugging by on the loop Line viaduct.

If the trains were still running my train would have been the last train of the night at 1135 on platform 4. I had cuaght it often enough, sometimes in a mad dash to.

But here i was with an ever building crowd of very cold people waiting for a bus.


A beggar kept comming around asking for cigerettes even jostling and joking with some people in a slightly threatening way, but only from the corner of your eye. He had a black eye and was really disheveled and had more wrinkles and nooks and craneys on his face than the flex on a vacuum cleaner. He eventually got a cigerette rolled up for him from a very large block with a ruck sake and a homemade fag in his mouth and a newish white beard with patches of colour. The end of his cigerette was thicker than the mouth peice, sort of a cone with its base at the burning end.

To my right was a rather twitchy business woman who talked to no-one and kept pacing from side to side and rubbing her arms or lifting her leg to rub off the other. It wasn't that cold of a night but she seemed to think it was the coldest weather possible.


Eventualyl at 1135pm the bus that had arrived as i got there opened up. It was the 1140pm 101 to Drogheda.

Some 32 people got on that bus. A large crowd for that time of the night on a thursday, i'm guessing.

Nice plush seats and even proper over the shoulder seat belts.

To my right sat a guy around my age reading a film magazine with feirce interest and awe, instantly turning on his over head light to stop any disturbance when the cabbin lights went down.

In the row directly behind him was a rocker chick. Dyed short blond hair, with tufts and highlights of black around the crown of her head and at the back. A 2-3 cm stud piercing sticking out of the middle of her lower lip. All her cloths black and hard to make out in the dark. The one feature i couldn't help but notice was her form fitting tights that reflected a lot of sultry light in the dark of the bus. Not an easy distraction to have in your perifory when reading a book.


I'm still reading On The Road, hey i'm a slow reader and haven't had much time, with my horror of study which is possibly the worst study anyone has ever done, or at least i feel it's that way.

Each time i pick it up though i love it. I had read to the end of the 1st part earlier during my evening meal of A Recession Buster in the upstairs of Burger King on Grafton street. Staring through the light drizzle every few minutes at the passing crowds and the Native American buskers who were packing up.

The bus sped through the night and empty roads up to the airport. Nothing but back roads and odd stops here and there.

Then at the airport we stoped for a few minutes.

Several more people got on.

At the bus stop below a very french looking girl with blond hair and tired eyes stood chatting on a phone while holding what looked like a smoothie cup. But instead of a fruit drink it was a fruit salad. I guess it was the packaging but why in a smoothie container?

Beside her was a more definate Irish woman who had slim head wrapping earphones that completly covered her ears. Without a care she bopped from side to side to her music. She wasn't the most attractive thing you could imagine and prejudice might had assumed she was a lesbian but she seemed completly care free in the cold and with surrounding strangers to just slowly shuffle side to side on the bench to what ever music came to her through what were very dedicated earphones. Silver with black finish and chipped, the well worn signs of a music lover.


As we kept waiting i noticed both the Movie guy and the Rock Chick were both sitting in similar positions and clasping their hands in the same way. For an odd moment i had to do a double take but they then both changed positions to completly different ones and the bizarre moment passed, but probably not the bizarre.


In stepped a backpacker who sat beside me.

His rucksack spilling out onto the aisle.

He rustled and fumbled with a large now empty 2 litre water bottle, a few other nick knacks and an iPod. He then settled in and leant back with his foot raised high and leaning on the arm rest of the seat infront of him.

It was then i noticed he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, at 00.00 in August, in Ireland, in a cloudless, moonless night. Not only that, but he was wearing sandles!


I kept reading most of the way to Balbriggan, Sal Paradise being inspired by the mania of his second big incounter With Dean Morriarty at christmas 1948, fast passed infectious righting that i was struggling to keep reading as the night wore on and my tiredness set in.

Through the side of my eye i wondered about the back packer. Where was he going at this time of night. Why did his iPod look so old. He was around my age, with shaggy blond hair and slightly bronzed skin. For a while i though Gap year student or erasmus student returning but it all came back to the sandles and shorts, no irish person would wear sandle's, not at night after a day with rain even if they just arrived. No he HAD to be an Aussie.

The movie guy left somewhere before Balbriggan in the middle of the picth black. And the hitchhiker hoped into his seat and slouched again, feet up.

He swayed about with his new freedom of space and looked at everything he could make out in the dark. Leaning into the ailse to look ahead.

The seat infront of me was a guy whering a beanie hat and he had loads of luggage with him. As he got up to leave i realised he had 2 guitars, a slimmer shorter case i couldn't identify, but most likely an instrument and a ruck sake. He struggled with it all as he stood up in the moving bus and briefly the Hitchhiker held one of the guitars as the Beanie Guy sort himself out.

At the following stop just inside Balbriggan the rock chick got up and i couldn't help but follow her movement down the ailse, and seemingly so couldn't the Hitchhiker who's excited looks around the bus and out the window briefly found a target for his attention.



When we reached the end of Balbriggan the bus driver stopped and checked if anyone wanted to get off or was asleep.

He walked down the ailse and stopped at the row infront of the hitchhiker.

In a thick African accent he proceeded to wake the woman who was sleeping there.

Several times during the journey she had dropped a mobile phone or something and now had been quiet for a while.

For close to a minute she slowly woke as the Driver kept asking her "Do you want to get off here, we're in Balbriggan, are you going to Dro-he-da or Bal-brigg-ann?"

Slowly she mumbled back to life and started to gather her things. Then more crashes and thumps. She had dropped more of her stuff and another African guy wearing a Paddy Cap helped along with an Eastern European guy in a leather jacket. She Mumbled none sensicle things in a think Dublin or Culchie accent that was impossible to regionalise let alone make out the words.

She proceeded down the ailse slowly and then stopped again at the steps down to the driver and then out of the bus.


The hitchhiker had been watching the whole thing bouncing back and forth in his seat with a sort of child like excitment thinking this was the funniest thing ever. He cought my eyes a few time's with the kind of knowing look you get when watching a movie with friends. I call it the "confirmation look". I catch myself doing it a lot when watching movies. I look to see what my friends or family's reactions are to certain parts, sometimes even looking to my side when no one's there. It's a sort of All inclusive "are you seeing what i'm seeing" look.

As she held the bus up by fumbling again on the stairs he turned to me and asked in an Aussie accent:

"Is shee peh-issed or jhust tie-ERED?"

A small smile crept on my face and i just looked down the ailse then back at him and just said

"Pissed" in a slightly inflected way to confirm that that was all that was needed to be said.



As the bussed pulled off her rather large Rear end stuck up into the air as she fumbled with her hand bag which was now collapsed on the pavement.

Beside it were 4 cans of Budwiser still with the plastic ring's sticking out of them, but appearing to be from seperate sets, so technically 8 can's of bear, with only 2 from each 4 pack remaining.


Off through the night we went again and i couldn't help but wonder where the Aussie was going.

We entered the short stretch of Meath around Gormonston and just passed it the Hitchhiker got up to leave.

We stopped outside two cottage pubs across the road from each other and the hitchhiker went off into the night. The second we started to pull away it became instantly dark around him, he had no reflective gear and the only light near-by was a car comming around a corner on a small road in the direction he was heading.

Cacky Shorts, a t-shirt, sandle's and a huge ruck-sack, in the middle of nowhere Meath at 20 to 1 in the morning. Talk about adventurous!


After that there seemed like nothing was exciting enough or as crazy. It was just a matter of getting home.

Arrived in Drogheda, the usual feux culchie accent greeting with each other of "Howaya" and off we went. Words about the hitchhiker what my dad called a "hard bloke" in a forced accent that i also could really identify but more kerry than the fake Louth or Offaly one he puts on to tell jokes or use certain phrases. He may have grown up in Clare but he's a North Dub at heart with a featurelss posh accent. Mine's worse though. I can't immitate any dialects what so ever, my voice is permenantly stuck. So sometime's when he does this silly immitations it just gets annoying, and proof that i can't understand where most of them are ever meant to be from.

Home close to 1 and i went to bed straight away. Noticing the lack of a moon, the amount of stars and the lack of cloud. It was at least 2 degrees or less. Where the "bloody" hell was that Aussie going at this time of night?