Ah, summer in Dublin. The hissing of sprinklers on suburban lawns. The hum of insect life in Stephen's Green. The quiet lapping of the Grand Canal as workers on their breaks sit and watch a swan go by, in the words of Patrick Kavanagh, "head low with many apologies".
Outdoor cafΘ life. The patter of small metal tables with uneven legs on warm pavements. Diners thinking this could be Paris, or even Rome, if it wasn't for the breeze whipping the lettuce off the plate, or the street urchin on the corner plying tourists with a window-rattling version of The Fields of Athenry.
Summer in Dublin. The warm caress of diesel fumes as a bus revs up just when you're walking past it in a clean shirt. Clouds of sun-baked dust from building sites. The cheerful murmur of jack hammers in the street. Holiday songs on car radios, as drivers stuck in traffic keep time by drumming their heads on the steering wheel.
And the constant digging, digging, digging. What is all the bloody digging for, can anyone tell me? I can't stand it! And will somebody PLEASE do something about that hissing lawn sprinkler, before I go out there and...
Excuse me. The point I'm trying to make here is that city living can, if anything, be even more stressful at this time of year. When heat and humidity add to the everyday pressures of a million people living in close proximity, with their personal space rezoned for residential use. Pressures which were well illustrated by two court reports recently.
The first concerned a bus driver who had a noise abatement order made against him, after a row with neighbours he accused of playing The Corrs a lot. Playing The Corrs a lot is perfectly legal, of course, whatever we might wish. But the driver had in any case taken the law into his own hands: retaliating with heavy metal - in the form of a motor-bike which he left running for long periods - and loud music, in this case classical.
He claimed he had been driven to it by "12 months of The Corrs". And if this is true - while, again, there are as yet no statutory limits on the period for which the Dundalk band may be legally played - you have to have some sympathy.
We've all had (or been) noisy neighbours at some time. I used to live in a flat, the front garden of which provided a base in summer for a homeless man. Nobody objected to him. Except that his main worldly possession was a ghetto-blaster, and he had only one tape: Shirley Bassey's Greatest Hits. This he would play endlessly, very loud, and often when the batteries were run down. If you've never heard Shirley Bassey on run-down batteries, well, it's scary. Local people used give the man money, hoping he'd buy a second tape. But of course he just spent it on food instead.
Anyway, an interesting point is the recent case was that the neighbours said in their defence they had a very young baby: hence, they argued, The Corrs could not have been played as loudly as the bus driver claimed. Maybe. Having observed two babies at close quarters, it strikes me the driver might have had grounds for a counter noise-claim. Certainly, when my infant son takes to protesting about something, not even The Corrs, Shirley Bassey and a motorbike combined could drown him out.
Whatever, the case, as I say, highlights the pressures of urban life. Which is why the open spaces and relative calm of the city parks are so important. Unfortunately, even these are dangerous, as the second court report showed. This, you may recall, concerned the woman who failed in a personal injuries claim after being attacked by a swan in the Phoenix Park.
It was an unusual case because, the court heard, swans are normally passive birds. Nevertheless, in a reversal of the popular Hans Christian Andersen story, this one turned ugly. The victim told the judge she had been feeding the accused when, as she walked away, he jumped on her, beating her with his wings and pecking her head. Only the intervention of a motorist, who frightened the attacker by honking the horn, saved her a worse fate.
The court heard character references for the swan, to the effect that he was not so much a rogue as a "loner". As such, he was obviously unsuited to life in Dublin, and the pressures maybe got to him. Or perhaps it was just, as the judge suggested, that once fed by the woman, the bird, "like Oliver Twist, had come back looking for more, and beat her to the ground". I don't remember Oliver Twist beating anybody, but that's beside the point. According to the report, the swan was captured after the attack and released (on a technicality) into the Malahide Estuary - where he is now said to be keeping his head low, with even more apologies than usual.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie
