WHEN I was in school back in the early 1970s, before the glorious days of Common Market, EEC, EC or EU, we had a teacher with an intense objection to the institution of marriage. From time to time, as we laboured over subjunctives and gerunds, a wedding cavalcade would pass the window of the classroom, with horns blowing to beat any band that ever blew. Although for us a welcome diversion, this would throw our tutor into minor paroxysms of shaking rage. "If they want to get fizzing married," he would fume, "let them get fizzing married away. But let them keep to them fizzing selves, and not be contaminating the atmosphere with the cacophony of their fizzing nuptials."
"I think of him fairly frequently in these dark days of the Irish Presidency of All Europe, when it has become increasingly hazardous to venture forth into the streets of our capital city on account of the cavalcades of Eurobullies being ferried - hither and thither, under full Garda escort, complete with wailing sirens, motorcycle outriders and flashing lights. The recent weekend mini summit was the occasion of many of these outrages, and the forthcoming December full blown summit promises even more.
Have you noticed how such cavalcades always seem to be in an unmerciful hurry, finding it necessary to break traffic lights, generally ignore the rules of the road and blow the decent taxpaying people of Dublin on to the sidewalks, in order to deliver their cargoes of bureaucrats to their appointed destinations?
It isn't as if these are particularly important people. As the cavalcades pass by, the unfortunate citizens of the capital, having hoisted themselves from the gutter in which they have been deposited by the advance party of motorcycle outriders, attempt to peer into the back seat of the big fat Mercedes which is invariably to be located at the centre of the cavalcade.
They do so, I suppose, in the forlorn hope of at least getting a good gawp at a meditating Helmut Kohl, or John Major eating a beef sandwich. Alas, they gawp in vain, for all but invariably what the Mercedes contains is nothing but a couple of minor functionaries, narrow shouldered and anonymous, and they bursting their arses laughing either at their own sudden importance or the sight of honest citizens being made to scurry out of their path.
What is so fizzing important about these fizzers that they feel entitled to disrupt the lives of the people of the capital in this way, to assault our eardrums with their fizzing sirens and deny our right to cross the road in safety?
Is their work of adding to the European talk mountain more important than your work or mine? Are they always late, and if so, what are they doing running the second most powerful political and economic entity in the world? Would it not be possible for them to drive around Dublin in Christian cars, observing the laws which they purport to uphold and vindicate? Why do they require Garda escorts?
Surely there is something the fizzing fuzz could more usefully be doing besides inflating the egos of minor European penpushers by bringing the city to a standstill on their behalf. One does not expect the Garda to be out catching criminals or anything, but there must be a lot of cars they could he towing away, and Grafton Street is full of buskers and hair plaiters only crying out to be moved on.
I'm told that when Jacques Chirac was elected President of All France, one of his first edicts was to the effect that in future all official motorcades be obliged to stop at traffic lights. It is a little reassuring to know that there is one leader in the entire continent who understands the outrage felt by normal people at the sight of these confounded convoys. Such sensitivity, I fear, is all but extinct in this so called Europe of ours.
I had a good friend once - now, alas, departed to the great internal market in the sky - who was made a public example of on account of metaphysical outrage to which he once gave expression on being assaulted by one of these official cavalcades. As the sirens wailed and the motorcycles roared past, he caught sight, in the back seat of the centrepiece Mercedes, of one of the greatest living fascists of these dark ages.
He was powerless to resist as his hand came up and he found himself unleashing the half pint carton of milk (this was before the Eurobullies made pints illegal) and propelled it in the direction of the passing tyrant. The carton burst harmlessly over the Mercedes, whereupon my valiant comrade was set upon by the occupants of one of the escorting squad cars and reefed into the back seat. He subsequently served a month in Mountjoy for this act of heroic, if symbolic, patriotism.
So come on ye good people of Dublin, and listen to what I say. They can only defeat us if we fail to act as one. For the remaining weeks of the Irish Presidency of All Europe, and in particular during the forthcoming December summit, I urge you to arm yourselves, as you leave for work of a morning, with something soft and juicy with which to alert these barbarians to our true feelings about them.
Why not carry in your handbag or coat pocket a tomato or an over ripe pear with which to greet these smirking bureaucrats and put the grins on the other sides of their faces? On hearing the unholy din signalling the approach of the forces of occupation, position yourself on the nearest grassy knoll and respond to these fizzing cavalcades with a little judicious interventionism. It is time to teach these bullies a little civility. I guarantee it will be at least twice as much fun as a referendum.