BEING THERE:Selling the papers is in Austin Creegan's blood - his father and grandfather worked on the same spot on Dublin's O'Connell Street. How much has changed?
MAIN STREET Ireland can be a lonely place at 5.30am. That's when Austin Creegan arrives at his news-stand on a corner of O'Connell Street in Dublin across the road from Eason's. First he gets a brush out and sweeps away the debris that's accumulated overnight. Bundles of newspapers, the ones nobody bought the day before, are placed on the steps of the TSB bank building.
The building is home to a pair of comical gargoyles that look slightly menacing in the morning gloom. The stand, emblazoned with a bright red Newsweek logo, is opened out to the street, newspapers are stacked and magazines - the kind offering collectable miniature clocks and football cards - are hung on hooks above Austin's head.
As the darkness lifts, the newspaper seller looks up and across the road to the flags on the GPO and remarks that the wind is westerly this morning.
As he predicts, for most of the day it blows in the direction of the news-stand. Perched on a nearby lamp post in perfect symmetry are a pair of pigeons. "Amazing," he says. "I have never seen two of them like that before."
Austin will stand in this spot selling papers and magazines until 7pm this evening. He works these 14-hour shifts six days a week but says he'd give it up tomorrow if he had another option. You believe him now at 6am when it's bitterly cold and he's drinking convenience store coffee, remarking grimly that newspaper returns are now running at around 40 per cent. But later in the day when you've seen his interaction with regular customers, whether it's Mr USA Today or Monsieur L'Equipe or the woman who brings him bananas from her trips to Donegal - "Bananas from Donegal," he says, shaking his head while getting stuck in to one - you are inclined to think he might be protesting too much.
Now 55, he's been on this corner selling newspapers since he was 10 years old. He says it happened "more by accident than by design". His father, Billy Creegan, now 85, made his living selling papers here, and so did Paddy Creegan, who was Billy's father before him. Between them they've been flogging the news to Dubliners - "more for survival than enjoyment," he says a few times as though it's a family motto - for about 80 years.
"It's different now, though," he says. "There used to be a sense of excitement about the newspapers. In the days before the internet and rolling news, the papers gave you information about incredible events happening around the world. Now you can watch a war on TV. They've lost their mystery." The endless extra parts of newspapers are also the bane of his life. "It's become a novelty to just sell a newspaper, you have to have CDs or supplements or giveaways," he says.
AS A SELLER, you are at the mercy of the product; it comes out every day and you have to be there to sell it.
Even though he took the day off on St Patrick's Day, he still had to come here early in the morning to lock the delivered newspapers in the stand, a slave to the relentless onslaught of the daily printed word.
He has seen O'Connell Street change over the years and approves of the transformation, especially the wider paths and smartened-up statues. He was there as a boy when Nelson's Pillar exploded and observed the introduction of traffic lights on this corner. "It was chaos at first," he says. He remembers the songs of the other sellers. "Heddild or Press. Late city, Press, Heddild, late city." Or the man down on Bolton Street who used to shout what sounded like "Meh, Meh, Meh" and this meant "Mail, Mail, Mail."
There was Ikes, who sold the evening papers, his smooth, gliding walk giving away a past life as a ballroom dancer.
Then there were the other characters. The two women who stalked the thoroughfare as though they owned the place. Mrs Dunne, the woman with the white hair piled up on her head, who danced merrily around in seeming religious ecstasy. The other was Maggie who dressed in black and carried a wooden cross.
"She'd had a bad experience with the church in the past and she used to confront nuns and priests coming out of Veritas or Wynn's Hotel," he remembers. "Maggie talked a lot of sense, she knew what she was on about."
He says Dublin's "character culture" has been replaced by "can culture". "You see them everywhere. It's sad, but that's what they are doing with their lives," he says.
The cast of characters who assemble here through the day know the spot as Nut's Corner. The Sicilian marble statue of Sir Lord Grey looks away from them towards the bridge, the Luas trundles past with a ding, ding, ding, ding. Nuts Corner?
"You'll see what it means," says Austin, brown eyes smiling. It may not be politically correct, but the nickname is affectionately invoked by those who spend time here. Austin explains that a few of the regulars who frequent the corner are in prison at the moment - there's well-spoken Denis who went to Belvedere College, but is homeless now, or cross-dressing "Mandy", due out soon. And beside the news-stand you'll find the all-day drinking club that Austin refers to as "the motley crew", drawn here by a nearby off-licence that starts selling alcohol at 7.30am.
It's important to point out that Austin Creegan does not just sell newspapers. He gives people change for the Luas. He tells people the time. He answers questions about the bus timetable. Does he know which bus goes to Leeson Street or how to get to Ballyfermot? Yes. And yes. In fact, he will spend the day answering as many non-newspaper related queries as he will sell tabloids.
He will also have conversations with customers and passers-by ranging from the insightful to the bizarre. An avid reader of history and biographies and of course newspapers, he reads the London Times and the Guardian daily and sometimes will even steal a glance at this publication.
He holds forth on football, the economy and US politics, an insight here, a gag about his team West Ham there. Then a customer called Big Foot, so named because one of his feet is noticeably bigger than the other, will arrive. The man with large sideburns can be sure of a full hearing here on Nut's Corner.
Today he wants to discuss a magic trick he saw on the television recently.
"It's an optimum delusion," Big Foot explains.
"I think," says Austin to Big Foot, "I detect a certain sobriety in your tone this morning, and I'll tell you something, it doesn't suit you."
"They say there's a storm coming," says Big Foot.
"Get your submarine out," replies Austin.
SOME PEOPLE THINK Austin must be loaded because he is one of only four vendors on O'Connell Street with a permanent pitch. So is he loaded? "I make a living, that's all," he says. "If I was loaded I wouldn't be here; people's perceptions can be very strange."
It's not as though he's doing a roaring trade. Polish men in work clothes pick up papers published in their language, a handful of customers want to read the Italian paper Gazetta dello Sport or the Spanish daily El Pais.
Meanwhile, sales of The Irish Times or the Irish Independent are sporadic at best. Today it's the Irish Sun and the Evening Herald that seem to sell the most copies, while there's a steady stream of enquiries for Match Attack football cards. But there's never a queue. And when it rains there's more people taking shelter here than there are buying papers.
"Do you want to know the last good day we had? The last time there were no returns? That was the day after 9/11," says Austin.
Does he have any regrets about his time on Nut's Corner? Well, maybe just one. "I really wish I'd had a camera with me, some of the things I've seen," he says. There was that time a man walked naked down Abbey Street. "He had no shoes on him either, which was the really strange thing, it was a casual act, like he was just out for a midday stroll," he says. "I did notice that all the girls coming the opposite way had smiles on their faces." He'll never forget the time Clery's was robbed and the thief ran down the street, notes fluttering from his money bag. "There was some scrum for the money," he says.
The memories are interrupted by the arrival of an older man with a walking stick and a cigarette glued to the crevice of his closed mouth. The choreography of their relationship is a joy to witness. Woodbine will chat for a while and then take his leave.
"Bye, bye Austin, see you tomorrow, please God," he says. Then he'll start talking again. Then he will say goodbye. Another chat about the weather is followed by another of Woodbine's faux departures. "He's like James Brown," quips Austin in mock exasperation but his tone is fond.
He suspects he'll be selling newspapers here until "either they put me in a box or I win the lotto". He insists with typical black humour that "if I had to do it all again, I wouldn't", and yet he agrees that selling newspapers is in his blood. "I don't know anything else, I don't think I would fit in anywhere else, what else would I do at my age?" he asks. It's unlikely his two sons will take it over. "They've too much sense," he says.
"We're like the Indians, our time has gone. There's a part of me that's sad about that, but everything changes." In the meantime Austin, Bigfoot, the Banana Lady and Woodbine keep the spirit of Nut's Corner alive. It's about survival not enjoyment. At least that's what he says.
