"Where're you going to spend Christmas holidays this year?"
"We thought we'd try something unusual. You only live once."
"You never said a truer word. So where'll it be?"
"In the queue for the O'Connell Street taxi-rank. We spent the past few festive seasons in the Dame Street rank, and made loads of friends there, some really lovely people, share their turkey with you and everything. But we thought we'd have a bit of a change."
"Well, we took the family to the O'Connell Street rank for Christmas three years ago, and we had the best Christmas ever. We arrived early - well, you need to there, otherwise you find yourself joining the queue in the Phoenix Park. So we got there on the 19th, and there were only 500 people in front of us. And you know what? On Christmas Eve, we even glimpsed what might have been a taxi! The excitement of it!"
"A taxi, begob! Did it stop?"
"Did it stop? It was a Dublin taxi. Of course it didn't stop. And to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure it was a taxi, but the youngest, Dolores, insists it was. Of course she still believes in Santa Claus."
"But you're not going there this year? That's a shame."
"It is. The wife's mother's bad with her varicose veins, can't spend Christmas queueing for taxis, so this year we're going abroad."
"Really? Tenerife? Gran Canaria? Morocco?"
Traffic thrombosis
"No, Quarryvale or Blanchardstown or the Square, Tallaght. The grid-locks there were looking promising in November, so by Christmas there should be a lovely atmosphere, nobody moving, traffic jams reaching to link all the suburban shopping malls of greater Dublin in a single traffic thrombosis. You could walk on car roofs from Quarryvale to Cornelscourt. The Christmas of the future!"
"I've got used to the traditional Dublin Christmas. Go for a few drinks. Try to get something to eat. Fail. Go for the last bus. Doesn't stop. Head for a taxi-queue. Wait a week. Walk home."
"Ah yes, the good old days. Well, I can see your point, but you've got to keep up with the times. Shopping malls. Vast car-parks in which nothing moves. Trolleys colliding with one another, grannies pulling one another's hair out, children throttling one another in the back seat. And on Christmas day, us all gnawing on a raw turkey. The modern Yuletide cheer."
Suburban Christmas
"Well, maybe we'll try the suburban Christmas when the kids are a little older. But they've got used to the traditional Dublin Christmas, standing at midnight with their arms full of shopping behind the entire population of Santry, Coolock and Artane, waiting for a taxi. And I mean, A Taxi. Which never comes. Sure it'd destroy the mystery of Christmas for them if we were to spend Christmas in a car in a car park in a suburban mall instead of where they always have it, in the freezing cold of the city centre, soiling their underwear, getting trench foot and frostbite. And singing carols."
"The carols, ah the carols! It's true, you don't get the old-fashioned carols in the suburban shopping-mall grid-locks. God rest you absent taxi-men. The folly and the hackney. I saw three cabs come hailing in. Gives you a lump in the throat."
"Exactly. Takes you back to your childhood, standing there, covered in chilblains, not eating in maybe a week, shivering in the sleet, and mumbling Christmas songs. Oh queue all you doleful. Once in Dublin's cab-less city. Oh mythic cab of Dublin town!"
Corpo handcarts
"Stop! Sure you'll have me in tears next. And remember the corpses at dawn, curled up beside the lamp-posts, maybe their taxi-fares held tightly in their pathetic little hands?"
"Well of course I do, and glad enough I was of them. The only blessed reason why the queue ever moved, the lads from the Corpo collecting the bodies in their handcarts each morning, and us shuffling forwards to take their places. Ah, Christmas in Dublin. Sure there's nothing like it."
"Where're you heading for now?"
"I'm not heading anywhere. I'm staying here indefinitely. I'm waiting for a taxi."
"Same here. Merry Christmas."