I was a yellow pack

I was a yellow pack, a one man operator, ridiculed but feared by shiny asses, I had no conductor. I drove the bread van and other assorted wrecks and bone shakers while the skulls hung out of them and the RPU hunted ticket dodgers upstairs and the windows fogged up on a rainy Friday evening. The demister did nothing, ineffective wipers scraped, loose panels vibrated. I ingested diesel exhaust while delaying the transmission shift and sometimes I demanded the exact change. I made excruciating progress down Aungier Street, carefully shadowed by the bus behind. I duelled with articulated lorries and with auld wans trying to use their bus pass outside hours. They said that I would not do that to my own Mother and others said that I had come to Dublin only to take their jobs and their Women and they politely suggested that I might consider quickly going back to where I had come from and it was no wonder that nobody liked us people from the black north . I was crucified but never marked up on the cross, I got bogeys and sometimes I sat on the bench and sometimes I drove the ghost bus and often the last car to or from Skerries following the normal line of route and I always fled from St. Ita’s at 23:45 and came back special.