C'MON DUBLIN... CLEAN UP YOUR ACT! BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

 

C'MON DUBLIN... CLEAN UP YOUR ACT!

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Don't get me wrong. I love Dublin. I love it more than anywhere else in the world. I can't ever imagine wanting to live somewhere different. It's the exact right city for me. But we're a year into the Covid-19 pandemic now, and there are a few things about our glorious capital that are niggling at me.

School's back- for now!- and so yesterday, after doing my usual Mammy-errands, I decided to go for a walk, just for the sake of it. Not to go anywhere in particular or buy anything, but because I thought it would be 'nice' just to reconnect with my gorgeous neighbourhood. My wander took me into the area of Dublin known as the Liberties and, then, on up the hill to Christchurch and the surrounding environs.

The first thing I noticed was that the streets are destroyed with dog muck. It's everywhere. If you took five steps with your eyes shut, you'd be nearly guaranteed to walk into a big disgusting patch of it.

Now I love dogs, and I especially love that the pandemic has brought the dog-walkers out in force because, let's face it, there hasn't exactly been a whole lot else to do this last year. Getting out and about in the fresh air and any sunshine with your dog is one sure cure for the blues.

But what about their, ahem, leavings...? I don't have a dog myself, so I can't set a good example to others by taking him or her out for a walk and enthusiastically scooping any poop with my placcy bag and little shovel.

But I'm pretty sure that, if I did have a dog, I'd never casually leave its muck on the ground for someone else to step in. For a child to fall in. For a pram or bicycle or wheelchair wheels to roll over. For someone to walk through with lovely new shoes.

I decided pretty quickly on my walk yesterday that if I accidentally dropped keys, phone or wallet into a steaming pile of doggie doo-doo, I wasn't even going to attempt to retrieve my property. I'd just leave it there and walk away, because nothing is worth getting a strange animal's s**t on your hands.

Okay, so we're done with the dog muck. The second thing I noticed (when I dared lift my eyes from the ground, that is) was that a pretty sizeable chunk of all our buildings are daubed with graffiti, and not the good, council-commissioned kind, either.

Rather, it was the kind where some brainless bozo with a spray can just doodles their initials, or their own name, or someone else's name, on a building in barely legible writing. Seriously, who cares whether Wosser wuz 'ere, there, or anywhere, never mind the flippin' date.

And, at this point in the pandemic with so many businesses closed, whether temporarily or for good, there are sadly more shutters down than usual around the city centre and, therefore, more of a target area for the graffiti 'artists,' although it greatly offends my sensibilities to refer to them as artists.

I like the brightly coloured electricity boxes- well, most of them, anyway- which have drawings legally commissioned by Dublin City Council on them. There's a particularly eye-catching one with a Dracula motif on it (Bram Stoker being an Irish author, of course!), but the other kind of graffiti is, frankly, just an eyesore and needs to be washed away.

Finally, my son and I were chased out of the park yesterday afternoon after school by a bunch of angry seagulls, who'd set their sights on my son's chicken fillet roll. This might sound hilarious, but trust me, it was no laughing matter.

They were huge and aggressive, and seemingly quite peed off at being denied my son's food. They came right up to us and screeched in our faces and stretched out their wings to threaten us. While they might not have the ability to break a man's arm like the swan is said to be able to do, I reckon they'd have a damn good go at it.

Now, who is she blaming for the birds, you might be asking? While no-one is responsible for the birds per se, it's only because we Dubliners as a people leave so much food rubbish lying around that the seagulls come this far inland at all.

Burgers, chips, sandwiches, crisps, kebabs, wraps, pizza crusts, you name it, we leave it all lying around on the ground or on park benches for the birds to mooch through it.

The restaurants and cafés are still forbidden from allowing us to eat inside their premises so, especially with the improving weather, we're dining al fresco and scattering our rubbish, dirty masks included, to the four winds.

The seagulls and pigeons feel entitled to our food waste by this stage. I imagine it's only a matter of time before a child or an adult gets seriously hurt while defending themselves from a bird attack.

Okay, well, rant over. All I'm saying is that Dublin in the rare auld pandemic times is starting to look a little unloved and uncared-for. Let's do something about it. We all want what's best for our city, don't we? Let's give her some much-needed TLC. She'll thank us for it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women's fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64