Gurriers (53 page)

The nearest junk food establishment to my next scheduled pick-up was Super Burger on Camden Street. Thankfully, there was no queue at any of the three registers, with just two people standing at the middle one waiting to be presented with their order. I opted for the register to my left and ordered a quarter pounder with cheese meal from a friendly girl with what sounded like a southern accent. She had just left the register to prepare the tray that my food would garnish, when the door exploded and a courier, that I didn’t know, erupted into the restaurant.

Couriers have their own unique way of entering premises. The most important thing to a working courier is to get in, get collected/ delivered/fed and get out as soon as possible. One step on the road to this goal is to have the attention of everybody in the room ASAP and the first tool available for this step is the door itself. By Christmas I was crashing open every door that I opened: - much to the consternation of my family on my visits to their houses!

This courier in Super Burger was laden down with an overflowing bag. On glancing out the window, I could see that he also had a box on his bike that was so full that the lid wasn’t closed properly, being held in position by a strained bungee. There were poster tubes on either side of his box, jammed in between the sides of the box and the bungees that held it in place on the saddle of his RS250.

Even before he shoved his helmet up onto his head and revealed the frantic expression on his diesel blackened face as he moved as quickly towards his goal as his load would allow, I had him sussed as one stressed out courier. All eyes were on him as he reached the only register that didn’t have customers at it. Obvious as it was to me, the courier’s condition did not register with the young girl at the till. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it had the tone of a chirpy greeting before she was gruffly and gutterally interrupted by a bark loud enough for me to have no problem making out.

“Give us tha’ burger there.”

Her gaze followed the line of his finger and found the solitary styrofoam container under the hot lights. This is when the girl’s lack of comprehension about this individual let itself be known. I had a feeling about what was going to happen, so I was straining to listen and heard what she chirped this time.

“Would you like fries or a drink with that? Maybe a whole meal?” The girl was obviously just saying what she was trained to say and probably said a couple of dozen times a day. That made the courier’s retort so much more damaging to the poor girl.

“Just gimme the fuckin’ burger!” he roared at the top of his voice, causing her to jump backwards, eyes watering instantly, and then hurriedly comply.

“Don’t need a bag.” As he slammed the exact money on the counter. The server’s lips were quivering, as she placed the box on the counter. The box was snapped up, its contents removed, and then dropped onto the counter beside the money that the girl hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to gather.

The courier had a huge bite taken out of the burger before he
even left the counter and then two smaller ones, as he marched towards the door at double time. Then he hurriedly mounted his machine, adjusted his cargo, flicked up his side stand and turned his keys in the ignition, all the while chewing furiously.

He shoved what was left of the burger into his mouth before starting his engine and then into gear and away without hesitation with the helmet still balanced on the top of his head and burger hanging out of his gob like a mouse from an owl’s beak.

The couple at the middle till, having been presented with their food just as he arrived at the counter, didn’t leave the counter until he was gone. My tray was placed in front of me, as the server was sliding the change from the courier off the counter with one hand into the other. I could see that she was gulping big lungfuls of air in an attempt not to break down crying and I knew that her eyes were full of tears even though they were pointed at the counter. As a courier, I felt obliged to give the girl some measure of an explanation about the forces acting on that man’s nerves that would have caused the outburst that upset her.

I sidestepped made my way along the registers, sliding my tray across the counter top. “Howya.”

She looked up at the greeting and appeared startled to discover that it was another courier. I spoke my next sentence hurriedly.

“It was out of order that he barked at you like that. It’s just that he’s under a huge amount of pressure. You can tell how much pressure we’re under just by looking at how much we’re carrying and that man is carrying a lot!” That seemed to pick her up a bit.

“You’re not rude like him.”

“I can be if I’m delayed, but I made time for food by lying to my base controller.”

“Four Sean,” Aidan said as if on cue! I often wondered, over Christmas especially, if Bollicky Balls had psychic powers. His sense of timing just couldn’t be that good.

“Speak of the devil! Honestly, sweetheart, don’t take it personally. He snapped at you because of the pressure he’s under, not because of you.”

“Four Sean, four.”

“Yeah, just leaving Merrion Square now heading for Camden Street. Can you put 20 on these bastards for keeping me waiting?”

“Funny how you’re just leaving when I call you, Sean.”

“Fuckin’ hilarious. Have ye any more work for me?”

“Just call me when you’re all aboard.”

“Roger.”

The girl, whom I just cheered up, got no more than a nod and a smile from me, as I left the counter. I only had the time it would take me to get from Merrion Square to Camden Street to eat my food and these days that wasn’t very much time at all.

The other episode I witnessed was more entertaining but also more victimising. It was an opportunist crime committed by a courier that I knew to see but not to talk to from Documents Direct. I also benefited from this crime; shame on me.

It was Tuesday the sixteenth and it was five to two. I was nearly finished bashing out eight jobs in Dublin 1 and 2 that had come in from south but I had already been dispatched the first three jobs on a run sending me back south to go with a return I would be collecting on Parnell Square and I was starving.

I was leaving Ormond House on Ormond Quay heading down the one way north quays as far as O’Connell Bridge to turn left onto O’Connell Street and then on up to Parnell Square. I intended to grab a burger on the go on O’Connell Street. Traffic along the quays was, as always, heavy. Seamus – as I now know him to be called – zipped past me on his Super Four 400 after flicking his bike inside a bus to use the cycle lane to get past it. He was moving as fast as a courier under severe pressure does. I was under severe pressure also. I let the bus pass me and then pulled off at full throttle around the outside, scanning the three slow moving lanes for opening gaps as I accelerated.

There was barely enough space between the side of the bus and the three cars in the lane nearest to it for me to squeeze
through and no apparent routes across the other lanes. I would have held back under normal circumstances, but trying to make time to snatch a burger during Christmas is not normal circumstances. Pressing my overtake button with my left forefinger, I clicked up a gear and nailed it.

The first two cars that I passed noticed me and moved slightly to the right. The extra gap generated by this helped a little, but the most important thing was that I knew that they knew that I was there. I would have liked to acknowledge their perception and good manners with a wave but that would have meant taking my hand off the throttle. The only option for me was a nod of the head which hopefully registered with the considerate motorists.

The donkey beside the front of the bus, however, was a different kettle of fish altogether. I got a glimpse of her in her passenger wing mirror as I approached her car going about 20 mph faster than her and was instantly dismayed. The beat up old white Nissan Micra with the large flower shaped pink blotches on it was under the control of a ditsy middle aged hippie chick with long scraggy mostly grey hair and thin framed John Lennon style glasses. The head moved slightly as the mouth semi-moved to sing along with the music that she was listening to but the gaze never faltered from straight ahead.

In the couple of seconds that this old tree hugger was in my life I deduced that the chances of her looking in her mirror were minimal, and even if she did that there was no guarantee that she would recognise either me or my intentions. Normal circumstances would demand patience on my part but, again, these were not normal circumstances and I was already after decelerating because of this crap. Drastic action was called for to get this delay behind me and into my past forever.

I was not going to get between her and the bus without smashing my right hand off her passenger wing mirror. I did not have enough space to swing across behind her and overtake her on the driver’s side, and even if I did, the traffic on that side was aligned in such a way as to be effectively a moving cul de sac. I
had only one option to proceed and that was to get in front of the bus and into the cycle lane and through gaps that I would be aware of as soon as I got past the bitch.

When moving through traffic at speed, a courier tends to be in the zone as previously mentioned. When in this full concentration get-through-at-all-costs zone, it quite often appears as if a plan is hatched, calculated and executed before the executor is even fully aware of it. This was one such situation for me. I had already glanced to my right to make sure that there were no bikes moving up to pass her on her driver’s side when I accelerated along her passenger side, flashing my pass light all the way to give her a chance to realise what was happening around her. She didn’t and I proceeded along her car until my handlebars were level with her front passenger seat and jerked my right foot sideways away from the bike to tap the bodywork of her car somewhere around the level of her back seat. She jumped, panicked and swerved violently to her right – as determined before the action was taken. No damage was done to her car because I used the side of the boot and not the metal-enforced toe piece. I did scare the shite out of her but I make no apology for that on the basis that she was drastically unaware of her situation in the traffic and what was going on around her; a habitual condition which my actions should have highlighted to her in a dramatic enough fashion to change her ways.

I firmly believe that because of me that woman is much more alert and, as a direct result, less of a hazard to other road users. Of course she beeped, long and indignant, but I was already two cars up about to swing across in front of a taxi to get myself into the cycle lane behind Seamus, harrumphing to myself that I should have been swinging myself in front of him instead. There were no cyclists for us to manoeuvre past (one advantage of winter weather) so we both pretty much nailed it all the way to the green light at O’Connell Bridge where we were both turning left.

The lunchtime pedestrian throng, which is at its most frenzied at this time of year, tends to be at its thickest at this particular junction. The jostling mass of people en route to somewhere,
most of them laden down with Christmas shopping, must have been six people deep all the way around the entire corner. From all of these people, despite the speed that he was moving at, Seamus picked out his victim the instant he rounded the corner. I noticed him too, but there is no way that I would have decided to act and then act the way that Seamus did in the time available to him.

The victim was tall, well dressed, bespectacled and not really Irish looking in some indiscernible way. He was on the kerb about ten people up from the corner and his full attention was directed at somebody on the island in the middle of the road that he was intending to get to. He waved to this somebody with his right hand and then pointed to the contents of his left hand, which he raised in an arc in front of him, keeping his arm straight, for demonstrative purposes. His left hand contained a paper bag. The bag had Burger King written on it. The bag was snatched by Seamus.

The last impression I have of the victim is his jaw dropped in absolute horror, as he gazed helplessly after the accelerating motorbike that had so suddenly and unexpectedly whisked away his lunch. His and whomever he had been waving at.

Unbeknownst to the victim, the second courier that rounded the corner, on realisation that the stolen bag contained lunch for two, opted not to brake, stop. Dismount, queue, pay and eat in favour of the time saving keep up with. Join, persuade and eat.

He had a whopper with cheese. I had the chicken royal and we shared the chips. For months after that I shouted or mimed about whoppers to him every time we met or passed each other on the road. To this day, the episode is relived every time we find ourselves in the same company.

Less breaks and more work meant more mileage and tougher days, multiplying the wear and tear on myself and my machine alike. I was lucky to be living with Vinno, and really appreciated his workshop and expertise throughout the season.

I learned to do most of my own maintenance and occasion
ally even got to give Vinno a dig out on jobs that he did on his bikes, but mostly my workshop contributions were making tea and skinning up. Nevertheless, maintenance jobs on the bike sometimes got left on the long finger due to physical exhaustion and narcotic apathy, as if the fucking job wasn’t dangerous enough without bald tyres, loose chains and overworn brake pads to contend with also.

I shudder to think how neglected the bike would have ended up had I been living elsewhere. I could have ended up suffering the same fate as Seven Mick, who bought a much needed new back tyre on Tuesday, December 9th but didn’t have the energy to put it on at night, opting to do it at the weekend. That Thursday he went on his snot on wet leaves on Palmerston Road in Rathmines and broke two fingers on his left hand. Not too serious as far as injuries go, but it kept him off the road for the busiest two weeks of the year. The plus side of this for the lads was that he was able to focus his full attention on narcotic supplies. Consequently, everyone that wanted one had a white Christmas that year!