Excerpts from a play

So I thought I’d give ye a wee gander at an excerpt of a short play I wrote which was shortlisted and performed in November 2023 at the Cork Arts Theatre 10x10. It was inspired by my experiences on Irish public transport over the past few years. It is set at a bus stop. Mags is an elderly lady dragging a shopping trolley. She is nosy, outspoken and somewhat of a secret ninja. Sarah is a well dressed and rather stressed woman in her thirties and Oscar is in their late teens slouched nearby with headphones around their neck.

Mags: Did your car break down?

 Sarah:  It wouldn’t start.

 Mags: Ah I thought so

 Sarah: What? How did you know?

 Mags: I am an oracle, I read people and you, my dear are not a bus user

 Oscar: Yep, not a usual suspect

 Sarah: Why not?

 Mags: It’s what I like to call the two B’s. To use the Irish bus service you need to be either bockety or bonkers.

 Oscar: Politically correctly speaking that is physically disabled or mentally challenged and preferably poor

 Mags: But that doesn’t rhyme

 Oscar: hmmm….Broke?

 Mags: Huh! Bockety, bonkers and broke. That works. The three B’s it is then!

 Sarah: Sorry I still don’t get you.

 Oscar: (sighs) It’s like this…no self-respecting, well dressed person with a regular job or life gets the bus in Ireland. It is low status, uncomfortable and you never know who you’ll get stuck with once it actually arrives.

 Mags: Sometimes there’s ould ones that smell of pee

 Oscar: And want to chat to you relentlessly

 Mags: Or people who drink a little too much

 Oscar: Or a lot too much, the burpers, farters and vomiters.

 Mags: People with twitches that curse

 Oscar:  That is known as Tourettes syndrome

 Mags:  Piss Flaps!

 Oscar: Arsebadger!

 Mags: Twatwaffle!

 Oscar: Cockwomble!

 Mags: Oh that one is gas altogether! And don’t forget the foreigners on video calls going ‘yada yada yada’ at top volume

 Oscar: You mean talking in their own language right? If it was only like the good old days (In inverted commas)

 Mags: Oh yes, such fun we had back then, we all had bicycles. Whizzed around these roads, safe as houses, no helmets or lycra then. Though I used to show a fair bit of leg back then I tell you. No strangers around apart from visiting cousins and the like.

 Oscar: mimics playing a banjo and does the twanging melody of ‘Deliverance’

 Mags : And the music, great craic with the sessions and the card games and the flirting. Grand days indeed.

 Oscar: Hard desperate drinking, exhausted uterus’s, shame, guilt, immigration, Magdalena laundries.

 Sarah : NOOOOOO! (quits rummaging and pats herself down) I’ve left my phone. God, oh my God, could today get worse?

 Mags : It’s actually quite nice, now Thursday, that was horrendous. Bucketing down and sideways. I had to bring a little medicinal brandy in a jar with me.

 Sarah: (muttering to herself) I’m so stupid. Jesus. What an idiot. I must have left it on the washing machine, oh God the stupid cat will be flicking it around the floor by now.

 Mags: Cats are lovely though aren’t they? The ould cat videos online have gotten me through some hard times.

 Oscar: Have you never heard of Toxoplasmosis?

 Mags: Toxo –what? More fancy university words from the latent genius?

 Oscar: It’s the crazy cat lady disease. Actually about a third of the people in the world have it…but it only affects certain people. It gets spread through cat feces.  Goes to your brain. Pretty much takes over after a while…symptoms include schizophrenic behavior and sexual perversity. You start being unable to smell cat wee and then the fetishes kick in, bondage, dungeons and the like.

 Mags:  That’s not true. That can’t be true. What’s the name of it again? (starts typing in phone furiously)

 Sarah: (to Oscar) Look, I’m so sorry but can I borrow your phone? I just need to make one quick call and I’ll give you some money for it.

 Oscar:  Don’t have one.

 Sarah: What?

 Oscar: Yep, I don’t have one. I think having access to unlimited cat videos is bad for the soul, rots the brain.

 Sarah: But..but you have headphones? Aren’t you listening to something?

 Oscar: Noise cancelling. No traffic, no wittering. Just peace.  Mostly.

 Mags: Oh JESUS. You are right. It IS a disease. That’s AWFUL. Now that I think of it Kathleen has been a bit odd lately and she has three cats. …and she keeps getting brown paper parcels in the post. Maybe they are whips or nipple clamps.