On public benches people rarely talk to strangers but new yellow benches in Dublin are inviting you to do just that, writes CONOR POPE
‘BY SITTING on this bench I am open to conversation with a complete stranger,” reads the carefully stencilled black sentence on a bright yellow bench at the corner of one of Dublin’s least fashionable Georgian squares.
This simple message appeared in Mountjoy Square last February and six months on it continues to beg questions. Who put it there? And why? Why is the bench yellow when all the surrounding ones are black? Why haven’t the council insisted this rogue bench goes back to black? And most importantly: does the sentence make a difference? What happens when you sit on the bench? Will complete strangers follow its orders and have a conversation with you?
There is only one way to find out.
“Do you have any skins?” asks the man in the grey tracksuit. I’ve been sitting here for an hour and he is the first person to talk to me. Everyone else seems too busy to sit on this bench on this sunny afternoon. Or maybe they would like to sit down but are too wary to sit beside a stranger, even if that stranger is doing his best to look affable and not at all bonkers.
I must seem puzzled by his question so he helps me out: “Rizlas, man, do you have any papers?” I’m all out of skins – have been since I was a student, in fact – so I shake my head and fully expect him to shuffle on. He doesn’t though. Instead, something strange happens. He reads the sentence, slowly and aloud. “Jaysus, who ever put that there must be awful lonely,” he says as he sits down beside me.
He introduces himself as Mark.
Over the next 10 minutes, Mark opens up. It turns out he’s the lonely one. “I’m from Finglas, unless I’m applying for a job, then I’m from Glasnevin,” he says with a throaty laugh which suggests he’s smoked a few too many rollies in his 37 years on earth. Right now Mark has no job. He has no address either. He has been homeless for several weeks, since the acrimonious breakdown of his relationship with the mother of his two young boys.
“I’m staying at a BB near here most nights,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s grand. The owner is doing me a favour by only charging me 15 quid a night when there are rooms available. It is better than the hostel I was in. There were so many needles in that place. Sleeping beside junkies. It’s not for me. When I can’t get a bed I sleep in a park off Benburb St. It’s grand cos it’s nice and warm out right now but Jayziz, the Luas starts awful early and it’s really f***ing loud.”
Speaking of loud, there is a team of builders working furiously on a five-story building across the road and as they blow-torch ancient paint off the original window frames, his gaze wanders towards the scaffolding which has shrouded the facade. “That’s what I used to do,” he says. “For 12 years I was a scaffolder. That was until the Celtic Tiger went tits up and I lost my job.”
He misses his kids. They are on holiday with his parents this week and his access to them has been limited since he split from his partner. The mention of the word holiday causes his mind to wander. “I remember going on holidays to France once. We took the ferry to Le Havre and then dad drove us over the Alps into Switzerland and on into Italy. That was a brilliant holiday, staying in caravans all the way. There was a photograph of me wearing shorts, Bermudas they were, and it looks like I am standing on sand but it was actually snow,” he says laughing his raspy laugh again.
“Me and my dad don’t see eye to eye any more,” he says, the laughter suddenly gone.
His voice trails off again as he gets lost deeper in memories. “I grew up with Jason Sherlock,” he says. “Ah yeah, Jayo was a good pal of mine and we used to be around in each other’s houses all the time. His ma used to make these chips. I don’t know how she made them. She didn’t have a deep-fat fryer or anything but they were the best chips I ever had. They were lovely.”
He shakes himself free from his happy past and returns to the gloomier present. He looks at the bench again. “It’s a great idea this. I’d always talk to strangers but it used to be much easier. It’s gone awful like London here now, he says. “People won’t even look at you.” And with that he’s on his feet again and walking with purpose in the direction of Croke Park, where his buddy Jayo was once king, still looking for skins.
Time passes. An elderly Jesuit, most likely from a nearby church, walks past with a silver cross dangling from his neck. He has a friendly, jowly face and just as he seems ready to join me the heavens open and he scurries on.
Long minutes pass. It starts raining again and just as I am about to call it a day, Tom sits down. “Ah you’re on my bench,” he says and, in an uncommonly kind gesture, offers to share his small umbrella with me.
Tom is from Wexford and lives in Harold’s Cross. He has been working in a grocery shop in Clonliffe for the last 25 years. “I wouldn’t say I work very hard but the boss doesn’t seem to mind. I cut back to just three days a week two years ago when I turned 65,” he says. “Before I came to Dublin I worked on a farm back home. That was a long time ago though.”
The rain stops and Tom’s thoughts turn regal. “I had the pleasure of a personal wave from the Queen when I was sitting here last year,” he says. “At least I think she was waving at me, there was no-one else around. I like the Queen and we shouldn’t be blaming her for the sins of her ancestors.”
“I’m not particularly friendly or chatty,” he says. “There are people who have been coming into the shop for 25 years and I still don’t know their names.” He pulls hard on his Major and, as the yellowing filter gets squeezed between his lips and starts to fall to pieces, he gets to his feet. “I must be off to work, I can’t be late or the boss will be cross,” he says.
He takes all conversation with him. It’s gloriously sunny now. And warm too. But people are still reluctant to share a bench with another person. At one point all five benches within view are taken by a solitary person.
It is kind of lonely.
It is this very loneliness this bench is railing against. Two years ago a London-based communications consultant called Ronan Harrington shared a five-hour bus trip to a music festival with a complete stranger. They got to talking. “Imagine a public bench just for strangers to chat and share a moment. It could be yellow so that everyone knew that the yellow benches were there for people who were open for a chat,” the stranger said.
Harrington was impressed and took the notion to the company he worked for. They talked about how to make the concept work but kept finding obstacles. Councils would object, people would complain, it would be destroyed by graffiti, no-one would care. Eventually the idea was dropped.
It wasn’t forgotten though. An Irishwoman called Amy heard tell of the apparently doomed plan last year and, acting alone, went to Dublin City Council. It eventually gave her the green light for her yellow talking bench and it has now spawned dozens of mad, sad, happy, silly and sometimes profound conversations proving that it really is good to talk.
