An Irishman's Diary

I SEE THAT Noel Dempsey’s plans to revolutionise Ireland’s cycling policy include a promise to introduce “widespread traffic calming”. Normally, such calming would be achieved though kerbs, street furniture, and other engineering-based solutions.

But I wonder if the Minister for Transport has considered entertainment as an option.

In Barcelona last week, I noticed an unusual busking act that could have potential here. It was just a couple of blocks away from Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia, on the Avenue Parallel: one of the widest and busiest of the city’s thoroughfares. The lights went red; the traffic stopped; and suddenly a pair of jugglers dressed in 1930s cabaret gear strode out into the middle of the road and began performing.

Clearly, their routine was micro-timed. They performed just long enough to hint at their full range of skills, by which time the pedestrian light had already turned orange and the cars were revving for take-off. But somehow the jugglers retained their composure, perhaps unaware that one of the reasons the Sagrada Familia remains unfinished after all these years is that Antoni Gaudí was run over by a tram near here in 1926.

Refusing to rush, they still found time to execute a perfect theatrical bow and then to proffer their hats to the drivers near the front of the queue: some of whom were now sufficiently calm to give them money before driving off. It was all rather pleasant.

If the Minister for Transport is prepared to be radical, there is the potential in this for a scheme that would finally make his name. Not only could he calm traffic in the most civilised way possible, making Ireland a global trend-setter: he could also create employment for hundreds if not thousands of buskers (in the process relieving congestion in such over-entertained spaces as Dublin’s Grafton Street).

There would be no shortage of applicants, I predict. All performers would need is a 45-second act and their own insurance.

The arrangement could be built into the cycle lanes with which the Minister promises to “retrofit” all urban roads by 2020. This will presumably include more of those little red boxes that already exist at some traffic lights, where we cyclists are encouraged to fan out across the width of the road; something we remain rather reluctant to do.

I don’t know of any sane cyclist who can happily occupy the middle of a busy road at the moment the lights change, indifferent to the throbbing engines behind him and aware of the ever-growing disparity between the 0-60 acceleration rates of push-bikes and cars. Which is one of the reasons (and inherent lawlessness may be another) cyclists tend to anticipate the green lights by up to two minutes at a time; always assuming they have stopped in the first place.

But perhaps as part of his 2020 vision, Mr Dempsey could install a second box at all major junctions, behind the first one and with a different colour, as a stage for the street entertainers. This would mean that cyclists would always miss the show.

But in Dublin at least, I think most bicycle users would agree that the challenge of staying alive is entertainment enough.

The buskers could do their thing behind. And taking advantage of the resultant distraction, the cyclists could wait for the green light like law-abiding Europeans and still have a sporting chance of getting away from the junction in one piece before the effects of the traffic calming wore off.

THE FINANCIAL SECTOR has a well-known weakness for giving colourful names to its acronyms, often using poetic licence with the letters involved.

Hence “Auntie Mae”, from the initials of the National Treasury Management Agency; an arrangement that belongs to the same school as Washington’s “Fannie Mae” (the Federal National Mortgage Association), and “Freddy Mac“: which, as a version of the “Federal Home Loan Mortgage Association”, is rather stretching the licence.

I had a feeling there might be something similar going on with the National Asset Management Agency (Nama). But I had been distracted so far by a tendency to pronounce this so as to rhyme with “Alabama”, and in turn by my attempts to rewrite the lyrics of the old Stephen Foster song, viz: “Oh I come from up in Nama/With a banjo on my knee.” Fortunately, reader Joe Gaffney has put me right. The key to pronouncing Nama, he says, is to pretend there’s a full stop after the first letter: “Enema. Get it?” Joe suspects the acronym was not chosen by accident, and I suspect he may be right.

Suddenly it all makes sense.