Ah, The Joys Of The Countryside

It was a beautiful weekend.
And so, after months of my been unable to walk long distances, we took advantage of the cold, clear weather, and headed off to the Dublin Mountains, Connie, Charlotte, Eric the mutt and I.
We stopped at Cruagh Woods, between Rathfarnham and Glencree.
Delighted to say, the car park was full.
But the extent of the wood, coupled with the fact that they have allowed the undergrowth to flourish, meant that we only occasionally met others on our walk.
Eric had a ball. He gets walked every day. But an adventure in a forest is something he's not used to. Mind you, he found the undergrowth a little scary.
After the walk, when we returned to the car, I found one abandoned Coke bottle in the car park. It was the only litter I saw. And I took it with me.
It was a different matter on the boglands further towards Glencree, I am sorry to say.

There we found burned out cars in what has, sadly, become their natural habitat. I can't remember driving that road in recent years, without seeing a burned out car or two along the wayAnd alongside the winter heather, beer cans were flourishing. Broken beer bottles, vodka bottles and whatever kind of detritus you can imagine dumped by the side of the road.
I suspect that at least some of those doing the dumping arrived in stolen cars which they later burned out.
But it would be wrong to blame just yobbos, young drinkers or hooligans in general. Because as you drive along the side roads, through the bogs, you will find fridges, televisions and all sorts of electrical goods. Why I don't know. All such items can now be dumped for recycling, free of charge. Some people seem to prefer ruining the landscape.
I have seen settees, mattresses, bags of household rubbish and builders' rubble.
Are these the same people who throw litter on the streets of Dublin and our other filthy (but apparently improving) towns and cities? Are they the phanthom chewing gum chuckers?
I presume so. Clearly, they don't recognise what they themselves are: the detritus of society.
The problem is easily solved. And was it not for the fact that the country is run by idiots more concerned about their own welfare, their own salaries, their own perks and their own jobs, it would be solved.
It only requires the will to solve it.
Ah, but if we were run by people with the will to solve problems, we wouldn't be miles above our Kyoto targets, we wouldn't have a shambolic health service, we would have roads, rail lines, schools, a sufficient numbers of policemen and prison places and judges and courts and doctors and nurses and teachers and special needs teachers and places for children with intellectual disability and places for adults with intellectual disability and...
You get the picture.
The only thing we have too many of, is ministers, members of the Dail and civil servants.
So maybe, after all, the rubbish dumped on that beautiful bogland, reflects us accurately after all.

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I Beg Your Pardon, Do You Have A Moment?

❍Litter: It's just a symptom of a mannerless age

I remember, as a child, being told to put sweet wrappers into my pocket, rather than throw them on the street. I did. I learned the lesson. And as a result, generally speaking, I have the dirtiest car in Christendom.
I remember being told to say “yes thank you,” or “no thank you.”
I was taught to say ‘please.”
I was taught to leave seats for my elders. I was taught to open doors for ladies.
I was taught not to speak until I was spoken to.
I was, in short, taught manners.
What, oh what, has happened?

It is my generation, and most likely, the one that has followed, which has failed utterly to pass on any sense of decorum to the children and teenagers of today.
God, it makes me feel 100 years old – thank God there are 46 years to go until I reach that landmark – but I despair of the ignorance, rudeness, lack of sensibility, total disdain for etiquette and complete contempt for manners of today’s young people.
They will barge past you as you enter a shop. Worse still, they will barge past an elderly lady as she enters a shop.
They will grab what’s on offer without a by your leave.
They will roar, often obscenities, at each other on thestreet, in shops, on public transport.
They will sit, on the bus or train, in the seat reserved for the handicapped, regardless of whether or not it is needed by someone infirm.
In their cars, they speed noisily through urban areas. They rarely if ever show any knowledge of drivers’ etiquette or road manners.
They throw their litter on the street outside shops, out of car windows – anywhere but into a waste bin.
During what we had of a summer, Connie and I sat in Merrion Square with Charlotte, hoping to spend a nice, quiet sunny afternoon there.
Not a hope.
A gang of youngsters invaded the park, chucking empty beer bottles around, playing football and shouting obscenities at their children to ensure, I presume, that yet another generation will grow up lacking manners.
Bus queues? They went out of fashion with black and white television. It’s everyone for him or herself, these days. And tough luck on the elderly woman who was first in the queue but wasn’t on quick enough to get a seat.
The thing about manners is, they’re not difficult.
If everybody had them, the world would be a much nicer place in which to live.
If shop assistants, for example, could put their mobile phone calls on hold for just a minute, if they could just resist chewing gum while they’re at work, if they could manage to abstain from talking to their fellow workers while there are customers in the shop and if they could turn down the damned music for a while, shopping would be something to enjoy.
If youngsters driving down your road at night, when you’ve just managed to get the baby to go to sleep, could turn the music down a little – just so they can’t hear it ten streets away - it would be nice.
If young men could have the courage to do something on their own, something brave like get on a bus, walk down the street, go to a shopping centre, wouldn’t it make a nice change from seeing gangs of them, hoodies up, menacing old women?
And what if children answered their parents with other than a caveman like “ugh”, what if they had the manners to actually talk to them, would the world be a better place?
I think it would.
The sad thing is, as I have said, that it is my generation which has failed to pass on the message.
It’s not just parents, it’s business and politics too. Their disdain for environment, for culture, for heritage and for the ordinary things of life which make it worth living, set the kind of example that kids all too eagerly follow.
Which is a pity.
Oh. And by the way.
Thank you for reading this.

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