At half-past seven tonight, a 123 double decker bus was following its usual route - having crossed Gardiner Street from Parnell Street, it was travelling east along Summerhill, moving into Summerhill Parade and on towards Ballybough and Fairview. Contemporaneous with the moving bus, three static children - ten year olds, according to an eye-witness - were arming themselves with missiles in the flats along Summerhill, waiting for a sufficiently rewarding target.
As the bus drove by, the children let fly with their fusillade. The two youths on the ground floor did no damage, but their Hannibal, who had the wit to station himself on the high ground of the first floor balcony, scored a bull's eye. He struck one of the windows of the upper deck of the bus, shattering it.
As the bus crossed the North Circular Road into Summerhill Parade, the remaining glass began to fall out of the window and render the bus unsafe. Another was called from the depot; as the passengers waited for the lifting of the siege, they compared notes about other horrors. One girl had suffered double jeopardy - her father had the back window of his car broken in the same area, while her dog had been blinded after being struck by the glass. Eventually, the second bus arrived and we continued on our way.
There are one million stories in the naked city, and this hasn't been a terribly interesting one. If anyone wishes to kick up the dust about it, and perhaps remark that when one is travelling home from a day's work one does not expect a re-enactment of the Alamo, that plaintiff will be met with a shrug of bureaucratic shoulders and be reminded that Dublin is a big city now bud, these things happen. Friend bureaucrat will remark in confidence that, were it up to him, "scumbags" such as these would have their coughs softened but, in his official capacity, the bureau's shoulders remain shrugged.
Unfortunately, if there is one stubborn, spiteful, selfish son of a bitch on this Earth it is your faithful narrator. An Spailpín Fánach is not willing to accept that being fired upon on the way home from work is beyond our control, or a small price to pay for living in "this vibrant city [that] hums with a palpable sense that it is creating a new cultural heritage", or any of the rest of that buncombe to which we're so often treated. As such, though he only be a voice, crying in the wilderness, An Spailpín will continue to record these incidents so that, when the Chinese or the Muslims or six-foot mutant ants or extra-terrestrial invaders like the Martians or the Jovians, whoever it is takes over from our now clearly past its sell-by date Western Society, will know what it was like in the final years. Stubborn, as I say.
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