I would imagine I am no different to many people in that I suffer from a degree of anxiety. Prior to 2019, this usually manifested in a mild degree of agoraphobia. I could manage a packed train or a bus whenever necessary, but concerts, bustling streets, or shopping malls were always places to be avoided.
In recent years I have found that my tendency to avoid crowds, has become a more acute need, extending to the company of people whom I don’t know very well. On a ‘one to one’ basis I don’t mind engaging – my misanthropic default is often proven wrong – as I encounter people whose ideas emanate from outside the RTÉ news bubble.
As such, attending for my car’s NCT test last week was not an impossible task, but something I was not looking forward to.
Frank Armstrong examines RTE kitsch on Dermot Bannon's Room To Improve, which allows shit to be denied and for everyone to act as though it doesn't exist.https://t.co/mUP5EV70r5@broadsheet_ie @BowesChay @BenPantrey @danieleidiniph1
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) May 4, 2022
Leitrim Life
I moved from Dublin to county Leitrim some months ago, and as a consequence my agoraphobia is almost entirely under wraps. There are very few people where I live, down a little laneway off a quiet road, just outside the small town of Ballinamore, in the shadow of the Iron Mountains.
Leitrim is relatively unmolested by the excesses of modernity. The population of the county would only half fill Croke Park. Forestry, fracking, semi-abandoned villages with neglected vernacular architecture, garbage in the hedgerows and ugly one-off houses, are among the few assaults a sensitive soul must endure.
I am very fortunate to live across the road from an entire family of agoraphobics; an IRA veteran and his wife and family. They home-school their kids and similarly hide from the world; wary of its narrow materialistic ideals, the ongoing romance with consumption and superfluous technology.
The two eldest sons of this family spend their days tinkering about with old cars: painting, sanding, welding bits of metal and fixing engines. Unemployed but gainfully so. Like me, they hide from a world they are somewhat apprehensive and mistrustful of.
The evenings in my garden are quiet enough to hear an owl hoot in the twilight. The old Gods still reside here. Sometimes I join my neighbours across the lane for a smoke and a cup of tea, free of judgements. I gaze in wonder at the mechanical heaps of rust and rot they are about to resuscitate.
The ‘lads’ did a service on my Yaris to get her ready for the NCT, changing the oil and brake pads. My wife hoovered it out, and I was ordered to give it a power-wash and click the rear seatbelts in place, as they are supposed to be visible – all in preparation for the big day.
Since resigning my Dublin medical practice in protest at the mad Covid Policies, and as a means of avoiding injecting children with the stuff that was called a ‘vaccine’, I have had a lot more time to myself.
Time to devote to bees, a polytunnel, NCT’s and other hitherto trivial things. Indeed, my wife was most concerned that the car should pass, as our son needs to use it for his driving test next month.
Frank Armstrong calls on Government to act decisively and imaginatively to allow more people to live in rural Ireland as a way of addressing the housing crisis.https://t.co/GL0xbRQXlV@RoryHearneGaffs @LornaBogue @LeitrimLive @lorcansirr @beny987 @PeterDooleyDUB @paddycosgrave
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) February 10, 2023
Coiled Again…
The test centre in Carrick-on-Shannon is about a forty minute drive from our cottage. As you have probably guessed, despite the attention of the two lads and all the hoovering and power-washing, the car failed. A front coil-spring wasn’t up to scratch, and one brake bulb was brighter than the other.
I wasn’t surprised given the car is ten years old. When I told the lads the news they laughed and told me to get the parts and they would address the ‘problems.’ This I did, and after finishing the work they showed me the old coil-spring. Apparently (they informed me) a coil spring is one of the suspension springs for the car.
They put the the old one before me and said that it was perfect, save for a bit of rust at the tip of one end. They insisted that this would cause no problem to the car, saying that the spring was tested under the heading of ‘suspension’; that it passed the physical test and that this was printed on the fault sheet that had been returned to me.
I then asked: “if it passed the actual test of its integrity and function, how did it fail the test?” They informed me that the chap who was looking underneath the car, saw rust on the spring and that it was a ‘visual failure’.
The lads aren’t highly educated by any means, so what would they know? They insist that for the most part the NCT is just “a multi-million money making racket”, an enormous source of revenue for a few people, and a way for government and car dealers to get perfectly decent cars off the road and replaced by new ones.
Buying new cars is, of course, really good for the environment, particularly if they have big lithium batteries. Across Dublin suburbia, dizzying heights of environmental virtue can be scaled at the bottle bank if one can pull up in a battery powered car.
Nonetheless, I find it hard to get too worked up about the nefarious powers behind the NCT network. The ideals of capitalism are pretty much universal at this stage. I was happy enough that the bulb and spring had been replaced and the car was ready for her retest. I had already devoted an afternoon to the first one.
The following week I returned for the re-test at my scheduled time of 4.30pm. The little waiting room was packed. The tests were running behind time. They didn’t get to my car until well after 5pm. I had plenty of time to listen to the people around me come and go, sharing their stories of success and failure.
Since time immemorial the Holy Wells dotted around the Irish countryside have exerted an attraction. Garrett Byrne explores a few sites recalling a bygone age.https://t.co/bvCQxKj0ej@broadsheet_ie @BenPantrey @corourke91 @danieleidiniph1
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) February 8, 2022
Wayward Bus
Some years ago I read The Wayward Bus, a little known work by John Steinbeck. It’s one of my favourite stories, concerning a group of people travelling on a bus, all from different social and cultural backgrounds.
The bus breaks down on a lonely road, and when it does the barriers that normally separate people also break down.
As a consequence of either boredom or necessity, when these barriers come down we may be compelled to get to know one another. I suspect that most people have had the subliminal experience of finding themselves stuck somewhere in the company of strangers, united by unforeseen circumstance.
The experience was also recently masterfully explored and brought to a beautiful conclusion in the film ‘Triangle of Sadness’. In that passengers and crew of a luxury yacht find themselves stranded on a beach and are compelled to get to know each other after the boat sinks.
Stripped of the relevance of their wealth and station, all must rely on actual abilities to survive. It’s a wonderful film with some great twists. Perhaps when the ship of humanity flounders, if we have time, we might pause and get to know each other a little better?
With Irish media placing unprecedented focus on climate change during #COP26 we recall an unhealthy dependence on advertising revenue from the car industry that appears to influence transport coverage in particular.https://t.co/wXx0LOgPVB@think_or_swim @WilliamsJon @ian_lumley
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) November 1, 2021
The Moment of Truth
As we sat in the waiting room of the NCT office I dealt with my agoraphobia by going outside for a smoke, at the point when people were getting to know each other, and social interaction seemed imminent.
There was no public toilet in the centre and no coffee machine, nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It was cold outside and a cigarette doesn’t last as long as an NCT test.
There were about ten of us seated in the plastic chairs around the wall of the waiting room. Occasionally the NCT man would magically appear at the empty hatch and call out a name for one of us. The chit-chat and various horror stories associated with tests and re-tests had brought us together, to the point where success or failure of one’s test became a shared experience.
Soon, a round of applause was being awarded to each successful testee (no pun intended). Commiserations and a few empathetic sighs were offered to the failures.
At last my name was called and I went to the Perspex hatch to receive the news. The man taped on his computer, and I caught a glimpse of the green and yellow of a new NCT cert emerge from the printer. The few who remained in the waiting room were anxious to know if I was deserving of applause or commiserations.
Not wishing to be a sour-hole, I turned to the row of seats and gave my comrades two-thumbs up, informing all that I had joined the ranks of the victorious. A round of applause was tendered, and a middle-aged lady seated with her daughter offered me a handshake – which seemed a little over the top!
Her daughter should have been heartily confused but seemed rather amused, the rules that applied to strangers were out the window.
Marcus de Brun ponders the question: Is it wrong for me to live out a life of comfort, whilst all too many others are living in squalor?https://t.co/Sq0h9T5TUG@indepdubnrth @broadsheet_ie @LumberBob @itsmybike @DLangwallner @PaulGilgunn @KevinHIpoet1967 @ian_lumley @NMcDevitt
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) July 6, 2020
Small Print
As I took the certificate, however, I noticed that the date on the new cert was only valid until May 2023. So, I had passed the test, but my car was deemed roadworthy for less than four months, at which time it would have to be retested. I felt certain this was a mistake, and brought it to the attention of the attendant.
“This cert is only valid for four months,” I said. “I thought the test would be valid for at least a year?”
He took the forms back from me and looked them over. “Your last test is out of date for over six months,” he replied, by way of explanation.
By then I was a bit irked, having paid for a test, and then having paid for a re-test, and now being expected to test the car again in four months’ time.
There was a three month wait for my first test, so, effectively, I would have to book the car in next week in order to be on time for the next test!
Despite being conscious of the fact that he was only the messenger, I still wished to shoot him (metaphorically speaking of course).
I replied: “but you are not testing the forms, you are testing the car, and the car has passed the test.”
Unfortunately, the starter motor was jammed, the spark plug failed to ignite and the attendant hadn’t a clue what I was banging on about. He smiled and then disappeared from behind the screen like the cat from Alice in Wonderland.
"A whisper at the school gate or a snub in the supermarket." Marcus de Brun reveals the damaging impacts of medical censorship and stigmatisation on dissenting doctors.https://t.co/A2YcwQDqs6@indepdubnrth @BillyRalph @BowesChay
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) October 30, 2022
Flashbacks..
My questioning and dissatisfaction did not go unnoticed by the small crowd in the waiting room. I looked about their faces as I departed with my Pyrrhic ‘victory’ in hand. One or two of the faces appeared sympathetic to my plight, others seemed mildly indignant that despite having passed the test, I still seemed unhappy – making a fuss and potentially causing a delay.
I felt the breath quicken in my chest. It was as though, for a moment I had been plunged back into the near forgotten Covid days of ‘put up and shut up’, because we are ‘all in this together’.
As I departed a large poster on the pane of the waiting room door said ‘goodbye.’ The poster was covered with smiley emojis encouraging people to buy an NCT disc-pocket that sticks in the window and holds ones new cert. ‘Hooray! I passed my NCT’. I wonder do people actually buy these gimmicks on top of paying for their test?
The poster reminded me of the smiley buttons that the HSE were dispensing to the vaccinated during Covid. I also recalled the free iodine tablets that were dispensed by the Government when they worried about the Sellafield nuclear reactor exploding, and that then reminded me of the Millennium Candle that came in the post at the turn of the century.
I’m not sure how or why I should feel that these little tokens are related in some indistinct manner – all buttons and smiley faces to stick in the window or upon one’s chest. I recalled where I had wanted to stick the candle when it arrived in the post.
The phrase ‘all in this together’ still makes me nauseous. As an old farmer in Rush where I once had my surgery used to say: “Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining.”
Dr Marcus de Brun argues that the origins of advertising lie in the ancient debate between Socrates and the Sophists who proved facile arguments with true facts.https://t.co/1A6zJsP5MB@indepdubnrth @broadsheet_ie @PD03662439 @connolly16frank @PaulGilgunn @IlsaCarter1
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) December 11, 2020
Just Political Deserts
I suspect that for many people it’s always raining in Ireland, a golden shower that moves from Leinster House, and then on to Mizen Head and Malin Head, each day of the year. Yet I am perhaps cynical enough to believe that we get our just political deserts.
One need only watch the recent rebranding of Bertie Ahern as the population is groomed into accepting him being provided with an armchair in the Áras. Or that recent RTÉ documentary that had Sean Quinn weeping, and staring wistfully out upon the lakes of Cavan, from the third story of his palace, like Ozymandias King of Kings.
One of the impossibilities of democracy – perhaps its greatest limitation – is a tendency to elect politicians who tell us what we want to hear. Nowadays our cast of chosen doctors – like the bishops of old – tell us what we want to hear, and give us the pills we have been groomed to demand. Should they venture outside of this brief and tell us what we need to hear, the ice generally thins beneath their feet.
Perhaps the greatest evil in the world is in the realms of paedophilia, and when this was exposed within the Church, it ended many people’s belief in and respect for Catholicism.
There is of course a sinister underbelly to our scandals, and that is the strangely complicit nature of “we the people”, whether it’s in the pew, or in the waiting room at the NCT centre.
I recall, as I made my confirmation at the National School in Swords County Dublin, how my classmates and I innocently queued down the church aisle to partake in the ritual honour of kneeling and kissing the Bishop’s ring.
We did it because we were sent up to do it by our parents. I also remember answering proudly in the affirmative when my grandmother asked me if I had I kissed the ring.
I was also an alter boy for a time, a role that was foisted on me by my grandmother, with the full and enthusiastic backing of my parents. Had I perhaps returned home and informed them that something ‘bad’ had happened, that I had been ‘interfered’ with, I probably would have been given a clip on the ear, or simply told to shut up.
Most kids who were victims of abuse, said nothing to their parents, and the reasons for this are rarely ever spoken about in Ireland. You can perhaps find traces of this in the NCT centre, or see it on the face of a teenager who is sent home from school because he has had his ear pierced.
My parents were not bad parents, they were just typical of their time. My point here is that in Ireland we like to think that paedophilia within the Church was entirely the fault of the Church and the priests. I tend to disagree. Parents, the state and society at large were as much a part of the problem, perhaps the bigger part. ‘We the people’ were invested in the scandal as much as the perpetrators. It seems that all too often we are ‘all in this together’.
The example of Matt Talbot's piety was used by the Irish Catholic Church in inculcate subservience as the downtrodden were told to await their reward in heaven.https://t.co/8uOS8DgHKe@broadsheet_ie @vincentbrowne @fotoole @connolly16frank @gemmadunleavy1 @AlanGilsenan1
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) January 20, 2021
Facing Up
Ireland will never be capable of really face up to the abuse scandals because we will never accept the blame for our own part. We will never question our gullibility, but our children might, as they are less likely to suffer from our co-dependence upon RTÉ.
In all likelihood, we will never explain the scandal of Covid policies, the waste and the suicides, because we the people were so invested in the narrative; a tsunami of indignant virtue in the midst of a state sanctioned pogrom in the nursing home sector.
What has this to do with my NCT? Perhaps nothing. But the lads were right, it is indeed just a racket for making money and taking perfectly decent cars off the road – another racket that we are all complicit in.
It’s no different to the Covid racket where billions in potential hospitals, schools and footpaths, were foolishly handed over to Big Pharma and men in yachts. In Ireland being ‘all in this together’ comes with an unspoken historical warning : you are either with us or against us.
Against us, and you run the gauntlet of vilification or exclusion, at best being depicted as a weirdo, at worst a bad apple. If you are with us, ‘there is one for everyone in the audience’, and any ‘minor inconveniences’ one might be compelled to endure becomes just another shower of golden rain.
Feature Image: Daniele Idini