Everyday people & their incredible gestures deserve to be championed as human gods – they make it all worthwhile
SOME people are Rolls-Royce. They are two steps ahead of the world as it spins.
They anticipate what’s coming before it transpires, what’s needed before the question is asked.
Human gods. They used to exist in abundance, before the age of phone in hand and brain like soup.
Now, they are few and far between.
A barman I know is one. He can keep a room full of drinkers content on his own, eagle-eyed to those whose pints are nearing the end, new beers poured for them without a word exchanged; maybe a nod, a raised eyebrow, the flick of a wrist, a pursed smile.
Born with the art of non-verbal communication deep in his DNA. He knows each customer as if he were a brother; repartee fine-tuned and unique for each one of his charges too.
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A racing man will bend his ear for tips heard in other snatched conversations.
He’s also an encyclopaedia of football. He knows each day’s TV guide inside out before the day begins.
He’ll stand his ground if the going gets tough. It rarely does, such is his command of what everyone needs.
A “clean shop” he runs. All sorts frequent. And he loves them all, mostly. The lonely, the troubled, the happy, the sad, the tormented and the one-too-many brigade are all comfortable in his orbit.
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And he in theirs. He can handle them all with a panache only those who see it all can.
I met him on Wednesday. A hard day’s graft at the coalface behind me, my barman friend regaled me of an impending holiday to Cabanas de Tavira on Portugal’s Algarve coast.
He goes now every year, after one of his regulars recommended the tiny seaside spot a few years back.
He’d never been to Portugal. Now it’s his home from home.
He worried not a jot about the heat when I mentioned it’s in the mid-30s there now. Unseasonably warm.
The sea will feed him during his week away from the taps in the bar.
Fresh shrimp, his favourite, washed down with a local beer somewhere in the shade after a morning on the hot sands.
He’ll sleep the deep sleep only holidays bring. And refreshed, he’ll return to what he does best — seeing the world turn before the rest of us and keeping the glasses filled.
GREAT GESTURE
Another human god sat beside me on the bus to work this week. A young girl, maybe 22, on her way to shop or to see a friend. I never asked.
After riding one stop, an old lady with a walking stick boarded.
Immediately, the girl beside me got up from her seat, walked towards the frail old dear, tapped her on the shoulder, smiled and offered her seat.
She knew well before it became obvious what needed to be done, and she did it without a second thought.
Such gestures light up the world. It made me smile.
RAISED RIGHT
That same evening, I was on the bus home, and the same young human god got on and sat beside me as she had done ten hours previously on the journey the other way.
She didn’t recognise me at first, but I nudged her gently and said: “You were on the bus with me into town this morning. You gave up your seat for that old lady. Do you remember?”
She turned and she smiled and explained her reasoning: “I have a grandad,” she said, “I was doing for her what I would do for him.”
“Fair play”, I said in reply. “You were well reared.”
We said nothing else to each other throughout the 45-minute journey home.
Nothing more needed to be said. She had done the right thing, and it made both of us happy.
PEOPLE WE SHOULD CHAMPION
Few and far between are those like her and my barman friend.
But they are the people we should raise up to the sky, herald, champion.
Without them, life is nothing but a series of dull interactions between those who are self-obsessed and absorbed with trivialities.
To see to the needs of the other before ourselves should be our first commandment.
That’s what makes this whole march towards the inevitable end so worthwhile.
AN IMAGE OF RADIANT HOPE
BEAUTY amid the darkness.
The image of a girl in a red dress standing in the ruins of her school is perhaps one of the most striking of the Ukraine war to date.
The Russians levelled the building in Kharkiv on February 27.
But they could never destroy the radiant hope the girl in the photo projects.
HOUSING MARKET ISSUES
YOU know you’re in trouble as a nation when a TD on over €100,000 a year can’t find a place to rent for her family.
Former Sinn Fein TD Violet-Anne Wynne, her partner and her six kids are living in a holiday home because there are no suitable places available at a reasonable price. I know the feeling.
I was looking for a place to live recently and could find just five properties for rent in a town of over 25,000 people.
AirBnB and greedy landlords are to blame.
Oh, and the Government for allowing the “market” to solve the greatest housing crisis in the history of the state.
STILL HOOKED ON THE WIRE
IF you haven’t seen it, The Wire remains one of the best TV series ever made.
Set in Baltimore, it explores the relationship between the drug underworld, the poverty that drives it and a police force that tries to keep a lid on all the madness.
Stand-out star for me is murder cop Bunk Moreland, played by actor Wendell Pierce. Bunk and his sidekick, Jimmy McNulty, played by Dominic West, steal the show.
The best thing about it is the script, each episode a carefully crafted masterpiece of slang and one-liner magic.
Bunk is so laid back he’s almost horizontal; Jimmy, is a nosy dog-with-a-bone detective.
Bunk to Jimmy after Jimmy unearths a series of new murders for the squad to investigate: “There you go giving a f*** when it ain’t your turn to give a f***.” Gold.
NO LOVE OF GAME
LOVE Island, an exploration of inanity through the medium of fit bodies.
Please leave your brains at the door to the villa, if you have one, which you probably don’t. Gemma Owen, former footballer Michael Owen’s daughter, has been the star of the first week.
She went on a “date” with some lad called Davide Sanclimenti this week.
Apparently, it was like “watching paint dry”, or that’s what one “fan” who watches the show reported.
Another wrote with all the insight of a dead badger: “The way Gemma was avoiding eye contact with Davide is like she was being forced to be at the date.”
Never?!
But back to Michael Owen. What must he be thinking day in day out as Love Island and his girl grind mercilessly on?
ENERGY DRIVING UP COSTS
THE price of things rocketed by 7.8 per cent in the past year, figures released yesterday by the Central Statistics Office show.
It’s the steepest rise in inflation since the dark days of 1984. Back then, life was so hard, everyone who had the opportunity emigrated. They had no other choice.
What’s driving inflation more than anything else now is energy costs. In the past year alone the price of fuel and heating has risen by an astonishing 56.7 per cent.
In the 12 months to May this year, electricity prices have risen 40.9 per cent and gas prices 57.1 per cent, while the cost of home heating oil has more than doubled.
The cost of renting a place to live has climbed too – up 11.2 per cent in the last year.
Putting food on the table is 4.5 per cent more expensive. The cost of transport has also soared, now 16.5 per cent higher than it was in May 2021.
It’s enough to drive you to drink. Except that too has climbed in price – a can of lager is now 28 per cent more expensive than last year.
It’s hard not to be depressed by it all.
We are a relatively well-off country, able by and large to cope with price rises. That’s not to say it isn’t a struggle for many.
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But it’s worth bearing in mind the devastating effects soaring inflation is having and will have on poorer nations. Putin’s evil war is not just destroying Ukraine, it is dragging the world into the jaws of a deep global recession.
The sooner he is stopped, the quicker we can rebound.