Authors: Kevin Brennan
The first time I met Niall was in the base on his second day with us, a bright and breezy cold November morning. I had three jobs on board going high road west - Crumlin, Greenhills and Tallaght - and a Danish pastry that I was determined to enjoy with a cup of tea in the base no matter what other work came in for me. Wanting (and actually needing) a break it bode well for me to get to the base without having more work thrown at me.
There were two bikes outside the base as I pulled up: Six Dave’s Bros and a maroon Kawasaki Scorpion 350. The most important thing for me as I burst into the canteen was to make my intentions clear to Aidan. As it happens, he looked towards the door on hearing it crash open, making eye contact with me immediately. I held up the paper bag containing the Danish and mimed drinking a cup of tea. He rolled his eyes and slapped his palm to his forehead as if in despair at the audacity of a courier having tea at ten past eleven. This meant that I would be severely barked at if too much work built up while I was having a cup of tea. Base controllers rarely – and Aidan almost never – give couriers their blessing to take breaks, no matter how badly needed they are.
I marched to the kitchen and put on the kettle, which was thankfully still warm from the last user. Only then did I address the other two couriers, popping my head through the doorway.
“Tea?”
“No thanks, Shy Boy.”
“Jaysus, I think I’ll turn into a bleedin’ cup o’ tea in this bleedin’ game! D’ye know how many cups o’ tea I’ve had already today? Do ye? Cos I don’t, it’s been that fuckin’ many! Ah, gowan, sure another one won’t kill me! Lots of milk and three sugars please, Shy Boy. Shyboy - that’s a mad nickname. I suppose the couriers gev ye that one. D’ye know what they called me in the last place? Nutjob Niall. Well, I suppose I’m a bit mad, aren’t we all? But I’m no nutjob. You’re probably noh shy either but that’s the way it goes. D’ye know what number Aidan gave me? Ninety- nine! Ninety-nine Niall, probably thinks he’s bein’ funny, but I’m jus gonna radio in as nah nah nah, get it? Nah Nah Nah go ahead. It’s goin’ to be great!”
The click of the kettle behind me was a most welcome excuse to get myself out of the line of fire of this hyped up, effeminate freak. His voice did have an effeminate ring to it. Not effeminate gay more like effeminate orphan who was raised by his granny and adopted all of the mannerisms of her and her companions
and then decided to do a dangerous job, which would jangle his nerves so that he could never shut the fuck up no matter how little he had to say sort of thing.
He was older than me and sounded as if he had been a courier for some time but there was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this particular short, fat, balding individual would always talk his way down the scale of acceptance no matter how good he was at the job; a job where you either ran with the wolves or became their prey.
All I could think about while making the tea was to avoid having this lad talk to me while I was eating my Danish. He had to remain inflicted on Dave. The best I could do was to deposit his tea on the table in front of him and, without breaking stride, take mine and my Danish up to the hatch to eat standing up and talking to Bollicky Balls. Some fucking break!
“Who the fuck is yer man?” I asked Aidan.
“He’s a good courier and I need good couriers.”
“What about all the good couriers that are going to have their heads melted by him?”
“Couldn’t give a fuck! Not my problem. But I’ll tell you one thing: anyone who batters him or sabotages his bike will be fired. I need good couriers.”
“Something tells me that, with him here, you’re going to end up needing lots of good couriers.”
“Is tha’ a fuckin’ threat?”
“No. I’m more tolerant than most. I just know that there’s a whole lot more of them less likely to put up with him than I am.”
“And what the fuck d’ye think yer doin’ with tea at the hatch?”
“Drinkin’ it where I don’t have to listen to Nah Nah Nah. That’s something you’d better get used to, Aidan.”
“Get away from the hatch with that tea.”
“I’ll go to the table if you call him over here.”
“Fuck off! I’m noh goin’ to listen to him.”
“Right back at ya, Fatso. He’d want to be one hell of a courier to be worth the shite you’re goin’ to be getting from now
on!”
“BWG for Belgard Road.” “Roger.”
I wasn’t in the base the lunchtime he was nicknamed. It was the Thursday of the same week and, having dropped my last job in Dalkey at ten to one, I had decided to call into my mother in Blackrock for lunch.
My decision was partly because I hadn’t seen my mother for a while and I was generally in much better form within myself than I had been the previous time I had visited her and partly because I had had the misfortune of listening to Nah Nah Nah for the entire course of my lunch break the previous day in the base.
That day Two Charlie, Seven Mick, Eight Ray and Twenty six Paddy were enjoying lunch in the base when Niall joined them. This was a bad combination for him with Charlie and Mick being the two least tolerant couriers in the company, Ray being the funniest and Paddy, all happy in his new relationship with Elaine, the easiest to make laugh, which would perpetuate any slagging that happened to occur.
Also, unfortunately for him, Niall had had a close call with a van that had pulled out in front of him that morning. The misfortune doesn’t lie in the incident itself but in the fact that Niall, a head wrecker when he had nothing to say, went into overdrive when something happened to him and babbled on unbearably about it.
Apparently the ranting started before he was even in the door properly. The mouth was in full flight as he undid his helmet strap en route to the table.
“Fuckin’ scumbag van drivers! Fuckin’ scumbags! He knew tha’ I was there bu’ he pulled ou’ to make me jam on the brakes an’ le’ him ou’. Well, ih didn’t fuckin’ work, did it? Oh no! I’m at this game too long to be bullied by a scumbag like tha’.”
Paddy had heard about him but hadn’t met him. He was the only one concerned enough to reply. “Did ye crash into him?”
“I mie as fuckin’ well have, the prick, but I beeped and
swerved to the rie, made sure tha’ I was blockin’ the fucker off so that he never gained an inch by bein’ such a scumbag. I’m at this game too long.”
“Did you hurt yourself?” snapped Charlie.
“No, but yer man-”
“Did you smash up your bike?” Ray asked this time.
“No but-”
“Well then nobody cares! We all go through that shite.” Mick delivered the retort that was supposed to put the topic to bed.
With the vast majority of couriers that would be the end of the conversation but Niall was not one of the vast majority of couriers by any stretch of the imagination. In some ways, you have to admire the man’s courage in the face of adversity. During his time in Lightning I often witnessed him in the face of adversity.
Very often. He always stood his ground, usually with negative consequences to himself.
“Well, I went through that shite today and shame on you if you don’t care about your workmates.”
“You’re only in the fuckin’ door, ye gobshite. Not even here a week and not only d’ye expect us to listenin’ to ye, ye want us to fuckin’ care about ye also! Go fuck yerself, ye freak.”
“We’re all brother couriers, aren’t we?”
“If I ever had a brother like you he would’ve been drownded at birth!”
“Well I’m glad tha’ I don’t have any brothers so that none of them could turn out to be as horrible as you, Mick. I’m after nearly smashin’ meself up and now I have to listen to you bein’ horrible to me.”
“Nearly doesn’t cut it with us, man. Go out an’ do the job properly an’ then Mick’ll care about ye.” Ray added.
“Oh, very funny, Ray, I wouldn’t expect you to take it seriously anyway. What do you care about anything if ye-”
“It’s not fuckin’ serious, ye pox bottle ye. That’s the point!”
“Maybe not to you but-”
“Just shut the fuck up, ye wanker.”
“Yes I am a wanker, Charlie, we all are! Anybody here never
wank? There ye go. What’s your point, Charlie?”
“The point is I’m sick an’ fuckin’ tired of listenin’ to your fuckin’ mouth an’ I’m on the point of shuttin’ ye up meself.”
“He’s more like a wankstain than a wanker anyway, Charlie. Not worth losin’ your job over.”
“Ye don’t have to lose your job if you want to shut me up. I’ll go round the corner with ye and we won’t say a word to anyone in here abou’ it.”
“Yehaw the Nah Nah Nah!” Paddy shouted.
“This kid’s got spunk, Charlie. D’ye even think tha’ batterin’ him will shut him up?”
“Prob’ly noh.”
“He’s a spunky wankstain lads, better let him blabber on abou’ his little frie!”
“Yer fuckin’ rie there, Ray. Spunky Wankstain an’ his never endin’ lip.”
“Spunky Wankstain! I love it. Here, Spunky, what did ye say to tha’ van driver?”
“Nuthin’. I jus’ beeped an’ stopped an’ stood in his way wi’ me finger stuck up at the prick.”
“Spunky Wankstain knows all about pricks. Ha, ha, ha!”
“Spunky Wankstain knows where he comes from.”
“Spunky Wankstain shot away from the prick after all that friction.”
“Yiz pack of cunts,” Niall grumbled.
“Spunky Wankstain wanted to join the cunts but didn’t quite make it.” Ray quipped.
Every time poor Niall tried to speak for the remainder of that lunch break one of the others would concoct another sentence featuring the new nickname that he was now doomed with. While he was there, another six couriers arrived in the canteen and were incorporated into the new nickname celebrations which continued to fill the canteen with raucous laughter – even long after the original perpetrators had one by one returned to work. Poor Spunky Wankstain was well and truly branded.
He did know the job though, and he got to know the locations of our accounts very quickly. He was soon bashing out
20+ jobs a day. For most couriers (as it happened with me) ascending to such levels of work meant being treated with respect, but for poor Spunky it resulted in malice and begrudgery.
Anybody who did less work than Spunky on any given day invariably gave out shite to Aidan the next day – including myself on one occasion after a particularly poor day’s work where it seemed that nobody in the city wanted to send anything in the direction my runs were aiming me until I was long gone on my way.
He and his bike were the brunt of more pranks than everybody else put together. He had to lock his bike all of the time because of the frequency with which his bike was rolled away from whatever building he happened to be in whenever he didn’t lock it.
One time an ex-workmate of his spotted his bike unlocked outside number 50 Harcourt Street, right at the top of the long, slightly upwardly sloping street. He parked his bike around the corner, hopped on Spunky’s Scorpion and rolled all the way down to the very bottom where Harcourt Street meets Stephen’s Green. He then thumbed a lift off a passing courier along Cuffe Street and up Wexford Street to get to his own bike and away.
Poor Spunky had a frantic half hour looking for it. His misery was only ended when somebody radioed in the location of the bike in a disguised voice over Channel Two, obviously concerned about any repercussions for helping a freak but still determined to end his suffering. Fair play to me...I mean him, whoever he was!
He got a terrible time in the canteen, but that didn’t fase him one bit: he still never shut up, pissing off everybody in the process. I often found my heart going out to the chap, but the sympathy only lasted until the next time he opened his mouth, which was never more than a few seconds. I used to wish that somebody would befriend him almost as much as I was determined that that somebody must never be me.
Where most couriers will turn the petrol switch to off on each other as a prank -resulting in the bike cutting out after the
carbs’ empty, but easily started by turning the petrol on again – they turned Spunky’s switch to reserve. This meant that his petrol tank emptied then – unbeknownst to him – his reserve tank emptied and then he was out of petrol, no matter where he was.
It happened to him one day when he was in the Park West Industrial Estate miles away from the nearest petrol station. As it happened, I was the closest to him, working my way around Clondalkin on the previous low run west and I was ordered by a particularly irate Aidan to “get some juice to that gobshite before he loses seven accounts on us.” I had half a 500 ml bottle of Club Orange in the box. This I drank, unclipped the rubber hose that went from the petrol tank to the tap, rinsed out the bottle with petrol and then filled it up.
I spotted Spunky from a good distance away on the straight road, and he clearly wasn’t himself. He sat on the kerb beside the bike with his feet on the road and his head in his hands. He perked up a bit when I arrived, anticipating the end of his motionless suffering, and I knew only too well that being rendered motionless in this industry was suffering, but I could see that he was still upset about the prank.
Out of sympathy, I shared a tip about petrol that Vinno had taught me. Quite simply, if you reset your trip switch to zero every time you filled up you would always know how far away from a full tank you were. Using this simple technique, there are couriers out there who almost never go on reserve. This is also useful to help couriers get cheaper petrol all of the time, instead of being stuck having to get petrol at one of the many ripoff petrol stations around Dublin. When you’re using fuel all day every day, it can help save lots of money to be smart about where you buy your juice. What Spunky had to do was to set the trip switch to zero on filling up and note what it was at when he went onto reserve. Once he kept zero’ing it on fill up, he would know to check his tap if he noticed that the trip mileage went above the figure that he went to reserve on before.