'RECYCLING'

Sorcha de Brún, one of Dublin Cycling Campaign’s members, penned the following seasonal piece for us. Many thanks Sorcha!

Dear Cyclist !

Christmas is coming and the geese are going bats! I hope my friends the bats don’t mind me saying that. No disrespect intended, I know what it’s like having to hang around waiting for long spells of time. Not pleasant!

It being Christmas and all, I’ve been doing a bit of touring around the place on my ‘ordinary’, otherwise known as the bicycle. You may have seen me whizzing by in my high-vis jacket –that’s me! – and my well-boned legs pedalling what you locals call the bejazuz out of this bike, but really, if you take some time (which I have infinite amounts of but which you probably have very little of) you would see that I am merely a bag of bones. Highly visible, maybe, but also extremely risible and essentially dust and air. And that small rucksack on my back? Why, that’s my bones I carry around with me! Nobody else is going to carry it, see? You probably think I am off to an important meeting, that I am going to bathe the minute I get into the pristine confines of whatever door of whatever glass building I propel myself through, and that I will exit in a sartorially resplendent outfit, a suit, a tie, the usual pointed shiny shoes, my hair only marginally askew.

Not me! I am Victor, the Ghost of Christmas Blasts and I am currently on tour in Dublin, courtesy of the East Wind and just about every other wind that can get its spoke in. And, well, I just sort of make it my business to hang about and to frequent as many cities all over the world as is inhumanly possible and to see how things are shaping up, bike-wise.

They’re shaping up pretty good in Dublin, the city of my mirth. That’s all thanks to the Bubbling Recycling Champagne. A hell (aha!) of a lot better than when I was last around. Interesting to see how the boneshaker has fared in the one hundred and fifty years or so since I croaked it. Having said that, what’s with the current crop of pedestrians who insist on stepping out in front of me as I scoot around this once glorious empire? I’ve collided with several – people, that is, not to mention empires. But luckily for them, my status as a ghost has saved them coming to any bodily harm. I just cycle through them. But the taxis: they’re the cabs with the yellow lamps on top. I simply cannot conceive why these dudes insist on opening their doors on the street side while I am hurtling at breakneck speed through them with no lights, because nothing would light me up anyway. I suppose they’re grumbling about me and my bike, but I just tell them they can get stuffed.

And that’s when they door me. Doored. What a magnificent verb! It rhymes with roared. Verbs aside, has anybody noticed the noise, or is just me? Granted, my ears aren’t exactly operating the way a pair of ears should ideally function, given that they’re two hundred years past what I understand the current human calls a best before date. (I spotted that in the dairy shelf in the local grocer’s shop, a shop which I noticed to my very great horror announces itself with reference to a fight). But the rumblings of those monolithic steel cabs, those horrendous carbuncles they call cars. They tear me apart, right down to my marrow.
It’s high time the Miniature for Transport attended to some of these issues, such as the Rules of the Slowed. In particular there are my own tissues, and the tissues of those of us who believe fervently in, eh, recycling. Has he not considered including in his brief (no, I do not wish to be included in his briefs) the issue of those us who have been transported here unwittingly? Yes, it seems I have been doomed to a life of pedals in commotion. I float on, leotard-less.

But it could be worse! And before my words desert me entirely, here’s to looking sharp at Christmas! Enjoy much Recycling, vast quantities of Bubbling Champagne, and Very Dapper New Gear!

Sorcha de Brún 2016

Interesting
Sunday, 30 October 2016 (All day)


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