Living in Noo Yoik
I went down to the village yesterday.
Things needed buying so a trip was in order. Anyway I had heard brilliant rumours that the village was being redecorated. The very idea that I could see normality returning lifted my spirits.
On the way down I passed the Big Sign. Big Sign is one of those huge yokes they plant beside motorways to exhort us to “Stay at home” [which is a bit late if you’re already on a motorway?] or “Stay safe” [thereby distracting us and making an accident more likely]. For the last few weeks Big Sign had warned us “Filming in progress. Drive carefully” even when there was no filming and I knew driving was going be chaotic. Yesterday though it proudly displayed a new message – “New road markings. Drive carefully”. I don’t know why road markings are supposed to be so dangerous and I usually ignore them anyway so I carried on.
I entered the village and the first thing I noticed was a new set of double yellow lines. What was weird was they were down the middle of the road. Now yellow lines have a specific meaning: a single yellow line in the gutter means you can’t park at all and a double yellow line in the gutter means you can’t park at all, at all. I had never seen double yellow lines down the middle of the road and assumed this just meant I couldn’t park in the middle of the road which makes some sense.
Inching my way through the village I saw that all the gaudy Disneyland fluffy decorations were gone. Fucking brilliant! What was strange though was that they were changing the shop names to other names that were completely unfamiliar, Walking back up through the village I noticed the road markings again. There was still the double yellow lines of course but they had marked out a junction, and the fucking idiots had put the stop lines on the wrong side of the road. That’s going to cause some amazing confusion?
I walked up to the vegetable shop which in the absence of my coffee shop is a great source of local news. There I discovered the true horror that had descended upon the village –
It’s no longer Disneyland.
It is now New York!
New Fucking York? In a little village in the Wicklow mountains? It explains all the weird road markings but that’s no consolation.
What the hell did I do in a previous life to deserve all this?
Don’t know what you did but it must have been something pretty bloody diabolical for you to have been unknowingly co-opted into the land of the septics.
Maybe I was a high ranking officer in the Third Reich?
Quite possibly: after all, many of ’em ended up being offered “new opportunities” with the US Gov’t, or the CIA, etc.
Grandad, you had to expect something like this. You recently declared the manor and all surrounding grounds to be an independent nation within Ireland. Surely you had to expect some fallout.
It could be far worse; they could have renamed it Portland.
I did NOT expect to find myself living next door to New York. With all due respect to the place, it is the very last place on earth I would want to visit. Now I have to do my shopping there?
To be honest, from my point of view little respect is due where New York is concerned. Personally, I have always had a preference for small towns and rural areas. Nobody gives a damn what you are doing as long as it isn’t bothering them.
Concrete and glass towers, crowds, noise and endless traffic? Nightmare. Give me the tranquillity of the countryside any day.
When reading this reply my first thought was “The town I loved so well”.
Maybe you will get to see and hear, that miracle of the preservative powers of Power’s and dentistry Shane MacGowan singing along with a CGI depiction of an un-aged Kirsty MacColl.
I wonder where they’ll stick Central Park?
Or Lady Liberty for that matter.
You know damn well where they can stick ’em…
I assume it’s New York State and not New York City? It would be a bit hard to imagine the village as Manhattan or similar!
Just follow their road rules: filter right past red stop lights!
And blow the horn as I drive….
Just lay on the horn all the way through.
(FYI, this applies to Boston as well.)