Gurriers (52 page)

Spunky was as delighted to get this helpful advice as only one who is usually treated terribly can be. He was totally over the
moon when I took two of the more awkward of his seven jobs off him – saving him several miles of zig-zagging – and bashed them out for him before heading back towards town.

The following Monday morning was unusually quiet and I got to the base before half ten with no work on board and only three Sandyford to town jobs done. I knew that there would be no problem with tea this morning and had equipped myself with a buttered scone, a mini-sachet of raspberry jam and a bar of chocolate en route. I was dismayed to see no less than eight bikes outside the base. The dismay was added to by the usual feelings of freak related woe upon realisation that one of the bikes was Spunky’s.

Unfortunately, he had been singing my praises about the Park West incident before my arrival and encompassed me in his rhetoric as soon as I walked through the door.

“Ah, here he is now - my saviour!”

“Don’t mention it, man. Really, don’t!”

“He’s the one who told me about settin’ me trip switch to zero when I fill the tank so I’ll know jus’ by lookin’ at it if I should be on reserve; or if some bollix is already after doin’ it. Nice one, Shy Boy!”

“Yeah, nice one,” snarled Charlie.

“Freak lover,” added Mick.

To me this summarised the naivety of the man. Here he was mouthing about his defence against the pranks that were probably played on him by people in this very room.

Needless to say the next time his petrol was switched onto reserve his trip switch was also switched to zero. This time he was half way to Wicklow when he ran out of petrol, which cost him the bulk of half a day’s work.

The man was resilient though; he took more pranks and slagging than anybody else would tolerate and still stayed on in Lightning long after any of the rest of us would have endured. He worked well with Aidan, the one person he didn’t babble and blather to – keeping most conversations to “go ahead” and
“Roger” even when he was in the base and talking to him live. Personally I think this was due to direct and precise instruction from our base controller, but maybe Spunky had enough copon to appreciate that Aidan was one person in Lightning whose head was to remain unwrecked by him.

Some respect is definitely due to the man for staying in Lightning that winter and absorbing the amount of despair that was heaped upon him by his workmates, respect that I personally never conveyed to him for fear of being clung onto forevermore by the man who needed friends so much.

It was this very need for friends that probably brought him to the local that Friday night early in December. As it happens I was out on my first date with my second receptionist that night, a pretty blonde that had a terrible attitude and only lasted three dates over the space of one week. Because of my date, I missed the proceedings, but I was in the base when he talked himself into accompanying his workmates on their weekly vigil. He said that his girlfriend (much talked about, never seen, only believed to exist by about 20% of the people who heard about her) was away for the weekend and for once he had a bit of freedom to go and enjoy himself with his workmates.

To me, this sentiment was the epitome of an unpopular person’s fabricated fantasy of being in demand and I found myself hoping with all my heart that this girlfriend did exist and that the majority had got it wrong in this case.

Fate was particularly unkind to Spunky that night as on so many previous occasions.

I have this theory about the equilibrium of things; that all things eventually cancel out to zero value. For example, somebody who is madly in love and happy with someone, will be so hugely heartbroken when the relationship ends as to negate the happiness beforehand. The theory remains largely undeveloped in my head.

If this theory held for luck as well as emotions, I believe that Spunky is due to win the National Lottery or have some life changing episode of sheer fortune, such is the amount of bad luck I have seen and heard about the man having.

As if it wasn’t bad enough for him to have the whole world against him, it seemed that most of the time for poor Spunky whatever could go wrong did go wrong.

This particular night what went wrong for drug-free Spunky was drugs.

One of Daymo’s mates from the flats, Wacker, did something for somebody (that everybody had the good sense not to enquire about) and received a thousand microdots in payment which were given to him in the local about 20 minutes before the couriers arrived.

Microdots are a particularly strong and scary type of acid, deceptively dangerous due to their diminished proportions. I have heard tales of people who were convinced they were only consuming halves of these demons that had actually been tricked into taking full ones by people who had two squeezed between their fingertips which they let separate after pushing a knife between them, pretending to cut one in half.

Wacker was selling these at ten for a fiver - a ridiculously low price for something so lethal - to get rid of them all quickly. Most of my friends bought ten each. Most of them thought: one for Spunky, nine for me. Most of them got him.

I can easily visualise the scene. Poor gullible Spunky, delighted to have people actually converse with him, turning this way and that to reply to questions and queries that were only posed to misdirect his attention while another mind-altering pill was popped into his pint. Nobody is sure how many microdots Spunky imbibed because the spikers were also partakers (and spikees as the night delved further into the realms of madness).

Needless to say that he took more than anyone else in the company, and most of the others took loads. Vinno still looked wide-eyed and dangerous when I next saw him in the flat the following lunchtime. He had four microdots left out of his ten. At least Vinno made it home.

A patrol car came across Spunky later on that night on Clanbrassil Street.

He was almost half way up a street light pole, clinging onto the pole with his left arm while swinging his radio holder with
his right, presumably at the streetlight which was still way out of reach. As he swung futilely he looked up and called cajolingly, “Here little sprout, come to papa.”

The gardaí were told that he only had one more brussells sprout to get before he had enough for dinner. He was told that there was a big juicy one on the back seat of their car and then detained overnight for his own protection.

He was released the next day without charge, and never again came to the pub with the lads. I took one of Vinno’s microdots the following night and I have to say that I am glad that I wasn’t in the pub that night. Spiking people with acid is bad enough but with that many microdots, and somebody who isn’t a drugtaker, that’s ridiculously dangerous and everybody is lucky that the episode didn’t end in tragedy.

Spunky endured, and continued to endure, everything that was thrown at him as little by little, the pranks and abuse lessened. Nobody would ever confess to respecting the man in any way, shape or form but I believe a secret measure of respect for Spunky by all to be the reason for the prank reduction that happened on the run up to Christmas.

That, and the Christmas madness.

I was brought up as a good Catholic Irish boy, but I am in no way a religious person. I go about the day to day living of my life with the barest minimum focus on bigger questions about life, death and creation that all religions do their best to answer.

It is actually surprising to me that I don’t think about death more since becoming a courier, between the danger and near misses and stories of fallen comrades that I hear my friends tell so often. Perhaps there’s an element of the ostrich about it, burying my head in the sand to avoid considering a greater likelihood of damage. That, and the quantities of drink and drugs that I was heaping into myself those days.

I suppose if I ever get to become old and weak and consider myself to be close to death, I will treat the issues with a lot more importance, no doubt wobbling my way to church frequently with the other old fogies that want to hedge their bets before they expire.

I was introduced to religion at a young age. I have been through stages in my life where religion has been to the fore-front, getting more and more of a grip on my life until I managed to free myself from its grasp. But religion is always there
somewhere; it will always be there within me, waiting to be triggered off once more.

Someday something will happen that will have me on my knees again. I am a recovering Catholic.

Even though I am not currently religious, the commercialisation of Christmas still sickens me. What was originally intended as a celebration of one of, if not the, greatest influences on humanities trudge towards civilisation has devolved into nothing more than a scrambling, greedy pursuit of wealth and favour.

I had no idea how far from religion modern society had dragged the festival of Christmas until I spent my first Christmas as a courier. The increase in business was apparent for some industries as early as the last couple of weeks in November, with more press runs from advertising companies, more and more urgent work to and from retailers and a whopping increase in collections from and deliveries to all companies involved in the sale of alcohol to name but a few.

I was well used to the job by the time this happened and was in Aidan’s good books due to a near perfect attendance record combined with general hassle free banging out of whatever work was dispatched to me. My average amount of jobs per day jumped from somewhere around the 20 mark to somewhere around the 30 mark almost overnight.

By Christmas Eve my best ever record stood at an impressive 47 mileage jobs in one day, a day in which I earned over £200 for the first time ever. Vinno also broke his record for the most jobs he did in one day that Christmas. He did 62 mileage jobs on the Monday before Christmas, and stroked three bottles of drink into the bargain. Nineteen ninety seven was before people grew wise as to not send bottles as presents with motorbike couriers. Many people got Christmas cards delivered to them saying the likes of “enjoy this on us” that weren’t accompanied by any “this”.

I was less than impressed when Vinno brought home his first stolen bottle - a fancy bottle of white wine in a presentation box – but by the time Christmas was done with I had had enough
of the whole lot, from dizzy receptionists panicking all over me about presents going to people who didn’t need them any more than they deserved them to snooty bitches at the other end who thought it was Okay to delay me because I was obviously only delivering presents.

One such bitch in an office in the Greenhills Industrial Estate turned her back to me as I approached her and continued with what was obviously a personal call. I had six jobs on board in a very scattered route around Tallaght and one for Blessington and had no time to waste on shite like this.

As soon as she turned away from me I turned on my heel and marched out the door. There was a lovely card with the bottle that adorned our fireplace for the whole season. That bottle and two others that weren’t delivered for similar reasons made my contribution to the 19 stolen bottles acquired for our home that Christmas. I am not proud of the fact that I stole from these people but it’s their own fault for employing such bitches as receptionists. The shame of thieving is cancelled out by the righteousness of punishing ignorant cows for those delays.

There was also an element of lashing out at the whole business of Christmas involved in this uncharacteristic thieving. Christmas to a courier means prolonged hardship over a period of several weeks that gets worse as the season progresses, with the attitude of the individual courier tending to deteriorate proportionately; especially those that were experiencing this mayhem for the first time.

Up until mid-November, I had gone without lunch no more than a handful of times, with praise and respect heaped on me by my base controller each time I made this sacrifice. Just to clarify at this point that going without lunch to a courier means not having a lunch break, not necessarily having to do without food. There’s far too much energy burned off during a busy day as a courier to do without food. Some people bring their own sandwiches during busy times; fishing them out of their bags every time they have motionlessness forced upon them. (Anybody who looks closely enough will be surprised at how many couriers they notice eating at red lights over the Christmas period). Sloppy eating of a sandwich over a reception desk is also an effective way to get the bitch to get a move on.

Sadly, junk food is a more popular solution among couriers – including myself. The tragic irony about this situation is that when people are under huge amounts of stress, as a courier constantly is at Christmas, the last thing he should be ingesting is greasy, artery clogging burgers, kebabs, chips and other such junk. When somebody has ten jobs on board with five to collect on a run going out of town at half two and his stomach is stuck to his back with the hunger, he’s going to be much more concerned with getting hot food into him without incurring the wrath of his base controller than how healthy the food is.

Two scenarios that I witnessed with my own eyes epitomise the courier attitude to food in December. The eleventh was a Thursday. It was ten to three and I was starving. I had eight jobs on board west bound out of town and two to collect. I had spoofed a delay on my third last pick-up to gain time to shove a burger meal into my face. I could tell by his voice that Aidan didn’t believe me but I was too famished to care.