Friday, March 27, 2009

Six degrees of separation - not in Ireland

I took a taxi home last night from Westmoreland Street to Glasnevin after an evening at the Connector event. The driver was chatty (no kidding I hear you say) and had a ripe Monaghan accent. The chat eventually led to Mondays' 24 hour strike by Taxi drivers. I asked questions about it and I guess being more curious than most he asked "how come you're so interested?". So I began my tale of why I started Down With That Sort Of Thing with "well I work on the corner of Nassau and Dawson Street and..."


I didn't get go finish my sentence.

"You're that one who takes photos of the protests and puts them on the internet!". I'd finally come face to face with my subject, something I've avoided thus far as I want to keep the blog firmly in documentary territory, no taking sides. We had a laugh about it & I sat there thinking "oh so there's actually someone looking at it". 

So I direct him towards the apartments in Glasnevin and as we approach he asks "are you happy with the apartment?" Bit of an odd question but ok. "Yeah they're lovely, I'm only renting but it's the best place I've lived in in 7 years renting in Dublin." Mr.Taximan: "That's good to hear. I worked on those when I was with Sisk. Great company, great work. Now I'm working a 95-hour week at this game to try make some money."

If the journey had been a bit longer I might have teased out his Monaghan background to see if we could strike any more common ground and no doubt we would have. It's a small world but Ireland seems to be truly tiny - I think Guare's six degrees theory could be halved for us lot but I wouldn't have it any other way :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. Typical of me thinking I'd already done it. We've got a registration page for anyone who wants to go/ help/ bake. @ www.cupcakecampni.org/attend or www.cupcakecampni.org/bake

Either way it'd be awesome to see you, have been reading your blog as of late. It's really rather good =]

Wanna mention CupcakeCamp? =P