Spacers, Chancers and Geeks

                  Spacers, Chancers and Geeks

As I patrol the streets of Cork City on weekday afternoons when most other people are working for a living I am grateful that through their taxes and the 'magic' of the system some loot finds its way into my bank account every Wednesday morning to fund my activities and projects which are all legal, I should stress, in case any think I'm a sponging petty criminal. I do feel duty bound though to record for posterity any observations I make so that future generations can say 'Such was the changing face of Cork in 2011.'

For example, in recent years I've noticed that in the season of giving and sharing (Would 'taking and binning' be more accurate?) i.e. Christmas that some charity workers standing outside shops, etc no longer want two euro in the box but instead are looking to extort 20 euro per month from you. Just as hard to fathom are those they approach who tell them "But I need that money for CD's…" These latter gnomes are best described as 'obtuse' - I looked it up and it means 'annoyingly insensitive and slow to understand' - a good word I realized if you wanted to insult someone and simultaneously baffle them. Anyway, meeting one such chirpy volunteer and feeling charitable and just a little noble I agreed to 10 euro per month because I'm not Joe Funds.

"Ok so," the girl said, as I signed a document with all my bank details on it, "And here's a copy for yourself…"
"No, thanks," I said, "I'm cutting down on paper."

Looking back on that encounter now, perhaps I should have been more cautious. I really hope my money is going to Africa and not to some guy on the Northside named Flynn or Jockser.

Then you often come across the bearded guys in sandals shouting about Jesus and love and peace outside a gun shop on Patrick Street and who seem very earnest and animated and mad. Who are they talking to? I rarely see an assembly of Cork's citizens discussing the finer points of their arguments (and it's always a man - why?) but I do see some teenagers taking the mick and asking questions like "Well, are you Jesus?" or else in the summer you might see a few curious foreigners. What you have to look out for though is the small dog you occasionally see standing still nearby and looking at the speaker intently, thinking, perhaps, in his canine way "This human seems different to the others - I will stay awhile and see what he does." The remaining 95% of people are miffed pedestrians hurrying past.

Occasionally you come across their competitors who are very New Age/Eastern/Head-the-ball. They ask you to say a word you won't find in any dictionary and probably comes straight out of 'Alice in Wonderland' but which they assure you brings instant happiness or good karma or something like that. You leave these people knowing in an even better way what happy, energetic, positive and complete spacers some young people really are. Maybe this only happens to me because I actually stop and talk to these bluffers but in my defence I do it out of a compassionate curiosity. I do feel that they get tired of the individuals who adopt the walk and gaze of someone who is sending the message: "I'm carefully ignoring you so don't approach me or you'll get the 'Sorry plus lame excuse' routine and neither of us wants that."

Recently, when I went to my GP to get the usual "You're fine, keep on truckin' ", she handed me my prescription and then a thought seemed to strike her and she surprised me by saying, "By the way, Martin, I would of course advise you that with that medication you should never ingest large quantities of alcohol and/or narcotics but (and I wondered how there could be any kind of 'but') if you do decide to go that route could I possibly get a sample of your brain tissue?"

"Get lost!", I said, "I need all my brain tissue to stay ahead of the likes of you!"
"What do you mean?", she asked, obviously a bit thick.
"I mean all you doctors, lawyers, politicians and the like and that's just the professionals. Then there are the guys who used to graffiti the desks at school and crucify swats and who now are plumbers and electricians who play on our ignorance about any part of the house we never see. How easy to tell us that the pipes need a 'complete overhaul' or that the wiring should never have been done that way 'originally' or that the last man, the 'cowboy' made a basic mistake or cut corners.

Then there's the corporate chancers and that's anyone at middle management or higher in, say, a fast food company, a mobile phone operator, shopping centre, call centre or anything IT related. These modern monoliths should be monitored as carefully as viruses that are studied by eggheads under a microscope. We can't let these 'Mc Donalds' and 'Microsofts', 'Tescos' and 'Vodafones' get out of control or it's curtains for the artistic type and anyone with a spark of creativity or originality who may well, by an imposed attrition, give up the dream and end up saying 'Want fries with that?'. The youth and energy will have been drained from their lives along with the will to live and they will be left with a numbed and bland existence and only the fading memory of something that stirred them once but is now lost in dull daily routine. This corporate takeover could actually happen in some nightmarish version of 'Animal Farm' where Bill Gates is like the pig, Napoleon, or in this case the philanthropist who leads the fight for freedom and then ends up being the Chairman and CEO of ‘Planet Earth Inc.’

Coming back to the here and now, there is also the humble door-to-door salesman or whatever their PC title is nowadays whom I thought were extinct in this age of the burned CD and humorous text message. I answered the door recently, tired and in my PJ's because it was just approaching noon, and was greeted by some guy with a cheesy smile holding a clip board and his buddy. Immediately he raised his hands and said, 'Don't worry, we're not selling anything!" and they both laughed. I was instantly suspicious and was in no mood to be tag-teamed.
"Oh ya," I said, "What's your game?"

He then went on to explain that he wasn't selling a product but he was selling a service which, of course, is even more expensive. I listened to him enthuse about Digital TV for 10 minutes but told him that ship sailed a month ago when I got Chorus in. Another time I had to tell the pool and gym membership guy that he could move onto his next target because I joined a gym in January and would be joining again this coming January and that he should certainly be able to see that. And the guy who offered me three months of cheap pizzas was told what he could do with those. I gave him the gym guy's contact number and said it was a friend's who would probably be very interested in the deluxe deal.

Returning to the doctor's surgery …
"Are you finished?" my GP asked, looking exasperated.
"No," I said, "There is the über-geek."
"And who's that?", she asked.
"You know the guy you hear about who doesn't do much that is productive or meaningful - unlike me for example - but who can, say, conjugate verbs in Klingon or draw an accurate map of Middle-Earth blind-folded and drunk."

"Ok, Martin, that's great, now here's your prescription. Goodbye." she said.
"Right, so, I'll go now and enjoy the rest of my day." I replied.
"What are your plans?", she continued, getting to her feet.
"I must polish some Russian coins and arrange 15 puzzles."
"What?? ", she mumbled, a bit taken aback.
"Well I arrange 15 puzzles in ascending order of difficulty and then see how many I can solve in one hour - so far 11."
"….what a freak…." she quietly uttered to herself in disbelief and then, quickly speaking up, she said, "Great! Sounds challenging! "
"Well it's good before a game of Dungeons and Dragons on a Saturday…." I said.
"Goodbye, Martin." She interrupted, shaking my hand and ending the conversation.

“Goodbye, Dr. Hollowhead and take care." I said, and exited the clinic feeling better for my rant and wondering if the good doctor liked Italian food and Brahms and walks in the country or was an encounter with her about as likely as a perfect puzzle score.