An Irishman's Diary

Perhaps you noticed the case in which Detective Garda David Byrne was awarded £116,347 in damages for assault

Perhaps you noticed the case in which Detective Garda David Byrne was awarded £116,347 in damages for assault. He didn't get a penny too much. If the award were trebled, I'd shake his hand, tell him he deserved every groat of it and murmur politely, Mine's a pint. Of the Dom, seel voo play.

David was on plain clothes duty in an unmarked car in Bray in 1992 when he came across a traffic accident. A certain female Traveller had been hit by a scooter and the lady's gallant menfolk - her husband and his brother - were setting about the scooter-jockey so robustly that David, being a copper and all that, felt compelled to intervene, ushering the said scooterer into his car.

Did he but know it, the best place for David was in the car as well, provided, that is, the car was anywhere - Grozny, say - but not Bray. But David wasn't in the car, and he certainly wasn't in Grozny, which must have seemed an attractive place indeed when one of the strapping young male Travellers lifted the scooter over his head and smashed it onto the ground. Heavy things, scooters.

Beam me up

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The two young gentlemen then turned their attention to the nearest living-and-breathing human being to hand, i.e. David. This is beam-me-up-Scotty time, but there is no Scotty, just David Byrne, detective, by himself with two indignant young Travellers. Why did he not urge gentle suasion? Why did he not seek the non-confrontational, I-feel-your-pain approach, and jettison the rude discourse of male physicality?

Why not? Because his two companions, apart from being hopping mad, were stone-deaf. So they kicked and punched him in the kidneys, arms and chest, trying to get his gun from him. A word here, David. Was there not a strongish case for introducing that device a little earlier in the disagreement? Though maybe, you'd almost certainly have had to use it, and then where would you have been? Few enough people would have been saying that here you were, faced with two raving madmen and in real fear of your life, and what else could you have done but shoot them?

Enter a passer-by with a lavatory seat. An interesting place, Bray. Scooters being flourished over heads like bandsmen's batons, bold chevaliers seeking instant physical redress for their injured damsel, an armed police-officer being walloped by deaf scooter-brandishers, yet not even reaching for his gun. And now, to judge from this tale, there are apparently all these citizens wandering around the town with lavatory seats in their hands. Is this because everyone's always stealing lavatory seats in Bray, and you have to take your own with you wherever you go, just as in the old Soviet Union you had to have your own plug for washbasins?

Bring your seat

And what happens in restaurants? Does the waiter say, "May I take your lavatory seat sir?" and you say, "No thanks, I'll keep it with me," and then of course the only place to put it is on the real seat. Hmm. Does merely sitting on a lavatory seat trigger associative reflexes, so that there you are, tucking in to your dinner in Bray, when you suddenly find yourself simultaneously having a number two and bawling for the Andrex? Bray does not enioy a reputation for haute cuisine; now I think I understand why.

But stay. I digress. As I was saying, one of Bray's many lavatory seat-bearing citizens intervened in the fracas, smashing it so hard over one of the two Travellers' heads that it, the seat, smashed, whereas it, the Traveller's head, didn't. In fact the owner of the head didn't even blink, but kept on fighting.

Exit, one former-owner of a lavatory seat, seatless. By this time, David is somehow or other safe and sound back inside his unmarked garda car. Safe and sound are of course relative qualities. Most of us would say that garda cars are solidly-made affairs, but then most of us don't live in Bray. Or go around with lavatory seats, just in case. Or send young ladies flying with our scooters. Or have stand-up fights with deaf and dumb Travellers, one of whom now decided to punch David. But David is in the car, no? Yes.

All in bits

The fist went right through the windscreen - you know the laminated shatterproof windscreen? Well, it went right through that, shattering David's nose and jaw and blinding him with blood. So now, his car, one scooter, one scooter-pilot and one lavatory seat, were in bits. So was David. And then a passer-by (with or without a lavatory seat) breaks the good news to David. Passer-by: Those two men, they've gone. David: Phew. Passer-by: To fetch a shotgun. Tell me. Have you ever noticed that there are some days when root canal treatment with a Black and Decker would have been a better option? Actually, things got better at this point, because another garda car arrived before the scooter-twirlers could return with their shotgun.

I'm giving Bray the miss this Christmas.