Set off for the bank and to pay my framer, Michael Hayes. At different locations I bumped into Evelyn Cawley, George and Joan Jones, Pat Dempsey, Maraed, my lawyer, and Brod Kearon from Natures Gold. Everything was fizzing. Then I popped into the Village Bookshop to talk about my book sales and there met Muiris MacConghail who revealed that he had suffered a stroke. He looked better that the last time we met. Overweight and sweaty. Now, two stones lighter and tanned.
“Ill-effects?” I said.
"Just one." Smiling: “I voted Fianna Fail,” he said and tapped my brewer’s goitre with the book in his hand.
It was sunny and cool and you could feel rain
was in the offing. I had things to do, buy a bird to eat (free range) and seed for
the creatures that twitter in my patch; bills to pay, cheques to lodge. We put
our trust in banks despite their arrogance towards us, and the knowledge that
we the people will pay for their misdemeanours for generations to come.
Drove my 95 Volvo to Donnybrook Fair at Blacklion, a grocery shop with knobs on that came into being on the hill in contempt of the economic bust and defiance of that scruffy old giant Tesco just across the road (boy that place needs a good scrub) and Lidl’s further along.
DF has fresh bread every day and strawberries and wines and cakes and a good cup of coffee and does a great line in delicatessen. It is a place to stand inside and feast your eyes upon. You can enjoy it without ever purchasing a crumb. When they first opened they charged Dublin city prices but the penny has dropped now. They are competing hard and their custom base is growing, I hear.
Evelyn Cawley was navigating her purse to pay the cashier when I came alongside to pay for my bread and strawberries. She looked as lovely as ever in a flowered summer dress. A little shop in a small town in County Cork is what helped raise her as a child. Now she looks down on us all from a big house on the hill.
“Evelyn, hi!”
“Hi Peter, how are you.”
“Great,” I said. “And you?”
“Great,” she said.
And that was sum total of our conversation because she then discovered that she had only dollars in her purse. Nor was she hesitant or quiet about the fact. She made it know to everyone in the vicinity. “All I have is dollars!” You know where she is coming from. Husband Michael just happens to be in charge of finance at Ryan Air so, I guess Evelyn was just back from somewhere Ritzy.
You remember her, don’t you? It was she who campaigned against the building of the harbour, and stood in the national election as in independent in June 2008 – and blew away €38,000 in expenses. For a spell she served as an elected member of Greystones Town Council and ran up against the solid mass of that old Greystonian, George Jones and his allies in the council chamber. She asked a lot of good questions and tried to railroad her pet projects through but caused too much friction for her own good. One of the elders at that time, Jim Brennan, may he rest in peace, made overtures to bring her into the fold with the maxim, “We should all be singing from the same hymn book.”
But Evelyn never did, fine organisational qualities though she has and fiery in spirit, she is doomed to thrive best with the bourgeoisie.
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