Tales Of The Gurrier

I almost caught one today.

The family home is in the south inner city. In twenty five years there it has exposed me to many of the seedier sides of Dublin life. Countless breaks ins, handbag snatches, muggings, car thefts, home invasions, drug addicts, drug dealers, escaped convicts, murderers on the run, brothels, prostitutes, pimps, pet murderers and enough broken car windows to glaze a cathedral. That’s nothing special I might add, I claim no badge of honour. I did not grow up on the mean streets of the ghetto or believe I had it tough or any other such tiresome posturing. There are many, many people who live in real ghettos in Dublin and confront crime, poverty and violence everyday and I do not wish to put on the poor mouth or imply that I am special. Nevertheless casual crime is merely a fact of life if you live in a large city. I grew up on the South Circular road that’s all and this has been my experience.

Denizens of cities develop a sixth sense for trouble. In reality it is a heightened sense of paranoia that ultimately is fruitless but deep in your heart you think one day, one day I will catch one of those bastards and then there’ll be a reckoning. That’s how I used to think growing up. When you’re a kid and powerless, sweeping up the glass from another broken window or seeing your parents work hard to give you a better life and then some gurrier comes along and decides to burn out your car or kill your pets or steal your bike because they can, because the narrative of their life says this is what you do. Break windows, steal things, kill things whatever.

It was not a daily occurrence but it is a wearing, grinding thing, a low level trauma that never leaves you. I slept lightly because I always assumed the worst. The least noise was someone trying to break in, to smash, to vandalise, to attack. A sound outside would have me peering out on to the road looking for the cause of the trouble. Inevitably it was a drunk or other inebriate wending their way home. The casual crime would happen when you were asleep at three in the morning and what could be done by the time you woke up? Always the victim deals with the consequences and wishes they could have been ready, been there to alter the course of events.

Once I woke up and spotted one, just once. A gurrier trying to break into my fathers car, I banged on the window and he ran away. Once in twenty five years. That was it, through several generations of criminals. Enough to fill half of mountjoy with scumbags and I catch one skanger trying to break into my Dad’s car. Until today.

Myself and the Brother are upstairs chatting away. Then of a sudden there’s almighty ructions from the dog downstairs in the kitchen. She’s a Jack Russell pup and it sounds like she’s being murdered so we tear down the stairs thinking she’s dropped a steam iron on her head or done herself some other injury.

The gurrier is standing in my parents kitchen when we come through the door. The dog is making such a racket he doesn’t hear us approach until we burst in. He turns and sprints into the garden and I am running now. I hear shouting and realise the noise is me roaring at the top of my lungs. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU FUCKING BASTARD, YOU FUCKING BASTARD GET THE FUCK OUT MY HOUSE! BASTARD! And I’m running and I can see him, I can see the bastards face, I can see his fucking face and he’s every toe rag fuckwit who ever stole from my family in twenty five years and he’s halfway up the tree now and I’m so fucking close I can see the hairy tache on him and the fear in his eyes and and I’m still screaming and I realise I’m going to catch this bastard, I’m really going to catch him, I’m going to catch one of these fuckers at long last and then I’ll, I’ll, then I’ll, shit what the fuck am I going to do if I do catch him?

And the moment is gone and so is he.

Rationalising after the fact I come to the conclusion that it was probably the best outcome. He stole nothing, got a bad scare being chased out of the house and almost caught by two angry men and a dog, we felt we achieved something in defending our parents home and most importantly no one was hurt including the dog.

The male thing kicks in of course and you think well I should have liked to give him a few lumps but in the end I’m philosophical about these things. Having physically defended my family from aggressive invaders on a previous occasion (a tale for another day) and dealt with the physical and emotional repercussions of that I can safely say that discretion is the better part of valor.

Still I got a finger to him. The native Americans call it counting coup. Only another twenty five years to go before I get another run at it.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Bloggery, Dublin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.