03:32
Rain is stopped streets are drenched with despair of the city dwellers.
05:31
Doors banging. Coagulant.
09:00
2003 Eight men charged with terrorist offences after being arrested at Continuity IRA training camp in Co. Tipperary
19:14
Whilst on expedition to the roof-garden, I have discovered seven new species of bird. The museum sparrow, the heroin gull, the old-but-swift, the baloobabird, the hoody crow, the girlfren and the boyfren.
20:17
Oh Xrist. I should have done nothing. The whole Hill is on high alert now because I called the Bridewell to say that there was hookers prowling. They was would a been wrecking me buzz. From a distance they looked like they could have been hookers but I think it might have been a case of mistaken identity. I mean I'm stoned off me bin and the girls have the knackery dresses on and he has the pimpy whistle and a tucked-in tee and winkle-pickers, Harvey Keitel-side.
On mature reflection he may be just a spiv with bad taste in shoes and not a pimp. He's too Hollywood for these parts. With his spivvy lady friends. But who are not tarts. Think they might be foreign. I made a mistake. Not easy for me to admit. I called it wrong. I'm a big man to admit it. That's what happens when you try to do good for the community. It'll never happen again.
In any case. It takes forty minutes for a cop to show. One finally appears on foot, panting and dazed, as if he'd run the whole way down from the Bridewell Garda station but got lost (it's a straight road). Our putative sex workers might have been standing on the corner chatting earlier on today when the anonymous call went in, but they didn't stick around, shall we say, to order a plumber. After a few minutes they dispersed in different directions in a suspiciously normal fashion.
Ten minutes after my false-harlot has been raised, and ironically, a new crew comes to occupy the legendary back-door corner. Tamara and Betsy, two local activists who have spent the last few weeks conducting a high-visibility campaign against “kerb crawlers” decide to patrol. Our local super-grans chase away the prostitutes by camping on their pitch during business hours and target johns by threatening to take their registration numbers. It’s all done with camping stools and big multi-color handwritten signs that look like they were workshopped with kids. (“Mammy, I’m making signs with granny. What’s a ‘kerb crawler’?”)
After too many times of looking out at junkies screwing on their front lawns they've taken the fight to the tide of turpitude. I think it's understandable if you never hope to get away from the ghetto to try to clean it up just enough that you can walk down the street without being accosted by junkies, pimps and punters.
The grannies run a commendable clean-up campaign. For my part, I support them tacitly, mostly. Sometimes when passing by I think about saying hello to them and thanks. I want to run down there at night with cups of tea for them but am restrained enough to do nothing.
Tamara is the most hard core, there every single night in a purple coat with a purple face while Betsie is an interchangable number two.
Now they've set up shop for the evening rush just in the minutes since I made the call, which I did out of respect for their persistent efforts. I have to say, their campaign is having a massive negative effect on business around here, which is great.
Into this world of hardened Jezebels and even harder angels, runs a freckly fresh-faced cop with the reddest of ginger hair. He's holding his hat in his hands. He's turning this way and that.
My gut instinct being never wrong about these things, the word "Roscommon" pops into my head. It’s a stereotype, I know but he's a real country boy this one. Can't be on the job more than a week. He's lost, which lasts about a year, and enthusaistic, which won't make it through a fortnight on the job.
Eager to see his first real-life Dublin prostitute no doubt, so he can tell the lads at home, he carries an air of urgency and hot pursuit as his carrot-hair sparkles in the evening sun. This will be a test of his street-wisdom over his training now. He better quickly realise that Tamara and Betsy are not the louche ladies reported or to be frank, they’ll eat him alive.
First up, he makes the classic noob mistake of thinking Tamara and Betsy give a shit about him. Short shrift. He radios back to base for further instructions. Message received, he's off and running again. He trots down Church Hill scouring for fishmongers.
At the junction he accosts two scumbags on the corner. On second glance, these 'scumbags' look weird. They look like they're coming from mass. Something about what they're wearing looks - ironed. Chinos, collars. One of them's got a genuine brown (not orange) Miami Vice tan visible via his sockless boat shoes. Clean boat shoes. His fat friend is wearing a crooked Madchester wig and a frumpy parka coat one size too small for him as he attempts the incognito Shrek-in-the-streets impersonation.
On the face of it they're everyman, blending into the background. Not to ol' scout-eyes here. The tell-tale difference between a cop and the indigenous specimen is the same every time - and I'm not talking the fact that most cops attempt to blend into the northside ecosystem by wearing rugby shirts (fail) - it's that all cops have clean shoes. White shoes are white in their books. Black shoes are black.
Other giveaway features include the lack of undisguised aggression in the lining of the jaw and the lack of hurry, because the cops are not running from anyone, except, perhaps, each other. Miami Vice seems to be putting Roscommon away about Tamara and Betsy while Shrek looks on lackadaisically. After a few minutes of nattering and on-the-job training for some, the situation is defused. Thank goodness they never bother to follow up on anything or I could be done for wasting police time.
20:38
I have Crockashitt and Tubby pinned in my binoculars. They’re playing cowboys and Indians. Crockett skulks about the front of Brown's Hotel, making like he's seen something. Shrek is baffled. Crockett plays hide and seek behind cars and lamp-posts for a while and then gives it up when Shrek refuses to play. The last I see of them is them circling back. There is something peculiar in the way the peeler-species walk. Hmm. See if I can read it. Walking with curious elongated strides, 105% of normal human walking distance, at about 80% of the speed, the classic cadence gets them through the beat without making it back to the barracks before the shift is due to end.
Hence the term "PC Plod".
Rain is stopped streets are drenched with despair of the city dwellers.
05:31
Doors banging. Coagulant.
09:00
2003 Eight men charged with terrorist offences after being arrested at Continuity IRA training camp in Co. Tipperary
Whilst on expedition to the roof-garden, I have discovered seven new species of bird. The museum sparrow, the heroin gull, the old-but-swift, the baloobabird, the hoody crow, the girlfren and the boyfren.
20:17
Oh Xrist. I should have done nothing. The whole Hill is on high alert now because I called the Bridewell to say that there was hookers prowling. They was would a been wrecking me buzz. From a distance they looked like they could have been hookers but I think it might have been a case of mistaken identity. I mean I'm stoned off me bin and the girls have the knackery dresses on and he has the pimpy whistle and a tucked-in tee and winkle-pickers, Harvey Keitel-side.
On mature reflection he may be just a spiv with bad taste in shoes and not a pimp. He's too Hollywood for these parts. With his spivvy lady friends. But who are not tarts. Think they might be foreign. I made a mistake. Not easy for me to admit. I called it wrong. I'm a big man to admit it. That's what happens when you try to do good for the community. It'll never happen again.
In any case. It takes forty minutes for a cop to show. One finally appears on foot, panting and dazed, as if he'd run the whole way down from the Bridewell Garda station but got lost (it's a straight road). Our putative sex workers might have been standing on the corner chatting earlier on today when the anonymous call went in, but they didn't stick around, shall we say, to order a plumber. After a few minutes they dispersed in different directions in a suspiciously normal fashion.
Ten minutes after my false-harlot has been raised, and ironically, a new crew comes to occupy the legendary back-door corner. Tamara and Betsy, two local activists who have spent the last few weeks conducting a high-visibility campaign against “kerb crawlers” decide to patrol. Our local super-grans chase away the prostitutes by camping on their pitch during business hours and target johns by threatening to take their registration numbers. It’s all done with camping stools and big multi-color handwritten signs that look like they were workshopped with kids. (“Mammy, I’m making signs with granny. What’s a ‘kerb crawler’?”)
After too many times of looking out at junkies screwing on their front lawns they've taken the fight to the tide of turpitude. I think it's understandable if you never hope to get away from the ghetto to try to clean it up just enough that you can walk down the street without being accosted by junkies, pimps and punters.
The grannies run a commendable clean-up campaign. For my part, I support them tacitly, mostly. Sometimes when passing by I think about saying hello to them and thanks. I want to run down there at night with cups of tea for them but am restrained enough to do nothing.
Tamara is the most hard core, there every single night in a purple coat with a purple face while Betsie is an interchangable number two.
Now they've set up shop for the evening rush just in the minutes since I made the call, which I did out of respect for their persistent efforts. I have to say, their campaign is having a massive negative effect on business around here, which is great.
Into this world of hardened Jezebels and even harder angels, runs a freckly fresh-faced cop with the reddest of ginger hair. He's holding his hat in his hands. He's turning this way and that.
My gut instinct being never wrong about these things, the word "Roscommon" pops into my head. It’s a stereotype, I know but he's a real country boy this one. Can't be on the job more than a week. He's lost, which lasts about a year, and enthusaistic, which won't make it through a fortnight on the job.
Eager to see his first real-life Dublin prostitute no doubt, so he can tell the lads at home, he carries an air of urgency and hot pursuit as his carrot-hair sparkles in the evening sun. This will be a test of his street-wisdom over his training now. He better quickly realise that Tamara and Betsy are not the louche ladies reported or to be frank, they’ll eat him alive.
First up, he makes the classic noob mistake of thinking Tamara and Betsy give a shit about him. Short shrift. He radios back to base for further instructions. Message received, he's off and running again. He trots down Church Hill scouring for fishmongers.
At the junction he accosts two scumbags on the corner. On second glance, these 'scumbags' look weird. They look like they're coming from mass. Something about what they're wearing looks - ironed. Chinos, collars. One of them's got a genuine brown (not orange) Miami Vice tan visible via his sockless boat shoes. Clean boat shoes. His fat friend is wearing a crooked Madchester wig and a frumpy parka coat one size too small for him as he attempts the incognito Shrek-in-the-streets impersonation.
On the face of it they're everyman, blending into the background. Not to ol' scout-eyes here. The tell-tale difference between a cop and the indigenous specimen is the same every time - and I'm not talking the fact that most cops attempt to blend into the northside ecosystem by wearing rugby shirts (fail) - it's that all cops have clean shoes. White shoes are white in their books. Black shoes are black.
Other giveaway features include the lack of undisguised aggression in the lining of the jaw and the lack of hurry, because the cops are not running from anyone, except, perhaps, each other. Miami Vice seems to be putting Roscommon away about Tamara and Betsy while Shrek looks on lackadaisically. After a few minutes of nattering and on-the-job training for some, the situation is defused. Thank goodness they never bother to follow up on anything or I could be done for wasting police time.
20:38
I have Crockashitt and Tubby pinned in my binoculars. They’re playing cowboys and Indians. Crockett skulks about the front of Brown's Hotel, making like he's seen something. Shrek is baffled. Crockett plays hide and seek behind cars and lamp-posts for a while and then gives it up when Shrek refuses to play. The last I see of them is them circling back. There is something peculiar in the way the peeler-species walk. Hmm. See if I can read it. Walking with curious elongated strides, 105% of normal human walking distance, at about 80% of the speed, the classic cadence gets them through the beat without making it back to the barracks before the shift is due to end.
Hence the term "PC Plod".
