Kilian DoyleMotorsEmissions: the road network
Great man for the wanderlust that I am, I pulled out a map of our green and pleasant land last week and began plotting an escape. As it lay on the kitchen table, east coast downmost, I was struck by how like a spider - flopped on its back, legs akimbo - Ireland's road network is. Albeit a spider with bulbous arthritic knees and mismatched shoes.
There's the dense dirty writhing mass that is Dublin, from which extend its legs, some thick and straight, some thin and crooked, each ending with a foot sporting a different item of footwear. Waterford resembles a mucky brogue; Cork, a great hulking thick welly; Limerick, a rugby boot with razor blades glued to it; Galway, a hippy sandal; Sligo, a wetsuit bootee; and finally, Belfast, which is a hobnailed boot.
Along the legs are nodules with names like Cavan, Mullingar and Carlow, painful-looking joints the lot of them.
"Urgh," barked the wife, who is a martyr to the arachnophobia. "Get that thing out of my house. Now."
While I myself hold no grudges against our octoped chums, I had to agree. It was a horrible sight. As ever, I did as I was told.
As I stood outside in the cold, dark, rainy night, trying to map my route to safety with a sodden map, a child's crayon and a box of wet matches, the rage rose in me. My predicament was someone's fault.
Naturally, I blamed the pernicious shower of cretins, past and present, who had overseen the planning disaster that had indirectly resulted in my banishment, not to mention dooming tens of thousands of unfortunate drones to spending interminable, soul-destroying hours commuting from far-flung satellite towns to work in the belly of the beast.
I loathe them all, the turnip-snagging politicians, uncivil civil servants and grubby developers, all of them too busy wallowing in their fetid crapulence to realise the consequences of their short-sighted Dublin-centric planning.
Still, what's done is done. No point crying over spilled tarmac.
At least now we have a plan on which to pin our hopes. I refer, of course, to the National Development Plan.
They've great hopes for the spider, our Government. More action in the feet and knees, better circulation up and down the legs, muscles toned to Adonis-like tautness and tonnes of excess weight shed from the bloated body. They promise it'll be up off its backside and skipping around in no time. Lovely.
I have my doubts. Can you blame me? Have you not seen those tasked with engineering this arachnid resurrection?
Take the Minister for Transport, for example. A Waterford man, he promised aeons ago to sort out a motorway to Waterford. Years later, no motorway. I ask you, if he can't manage to use his position to seduce his own prey, sorry, constituents, what chance have the rest of us?
His pitiful failure to scratch the very backs that pushed his own on to a comfy bench in Leinster House is an insult to the noble tradition of favour-granting, envelope-passing, representation-making, stroke-pulling gombeen clientelist politics of which we Irish are so justifiably proud. He needs to cop on. We have a reputation to uphold. Imagine if the Germans got wind of it? Next time we go looking for structural funds we'll be laughed out of Brussels.
He could do with getting a few pointers from John O'Donoghue, a man with a PhD in knowing what side his bread is buttered on. If Big John was Minister for Transport, you could bet Fungi's fins there'd be a monorail running from Tralee to the front door of Croke Park by now.
Of course, there is another way of looking at the spider. It could, to those less cynical than I, resemble a sunrise. They'd have you believe the rays emanating from the warm core are bringing hope of a sunny glow to us all.
Me, I see a sun that's setting. Setting on the political careers of a lot of folk unless they manage to orchestrate a new dawn. Quickly. The light is fading fast.