Dazed In The Life

In a taxi into town today, driving down Westland Row and turning left onto Pearse Street. I was idly gazing out the passenger window, not really paying much attention – checking to see if anyone I knew was working out in the goldfish bowl that is the Trinity College gym. Seriously, who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to put a gym with enormous windows beside a busy street in Dublin City centre? It only encourages Peeping Toms who aren’t so much Peeping as Casually-Glancing-And-Can’t-Avoid-Seeing-The-Hot-Ladies Toms.
Anyway, the taxi driver must have been “casually glancing” just as I was. All of a sudden, from the right side of the road, four pedestrians came sprinting, or stumbling, all holding hands and dashed in front of the car, narrowly avoiding being killed. They smiled inanely and carried on their merry way. The driver remonstrated with me – and, as far as I’m aware, it wasn’t my fault they were idiots – all the way up Pearse Street.
Now, they looked Spanish – olive skin, brightly coloured backpacks, the fact that they were holding hands and giggling in the face of certain death, and, of course, they were chattering so loudly that I could hear them through the windscreen – but I’m sure the rules of the road are quite similar in Spain to those here. Not only is running out into moving traffic dangerous – if also a highly successful way of culling the weak in the species – but to be running in that sort of chain-fashion could have resulted in catastrophe if one had fallen or pulled back at the wrong moment. There must have been some sort of crazed kamikaze pact behind the whole thing. Anyway, that put the shakes on me for the rest of the day. I had to have a pizza for dinner tonight just to restore my faith in mankind’s genius…