A Transfer Home Is The First Priority
When I arrived in Dublin in 1980 as a young garda, my first thought was ok, how do I go about getting back to Cork? It was well known at the time that while there were guys from all over Ireland being sent to Dublin from the Garda Training Centre in Templemore, it was the guys from Cork who almost always went on a mission to get back home. The first task to be completed on arrival at the new station for any Cork man was to stick in a transfer request and then settle back for the long wait.
I had spent three years attached to Blackrock Garda Station when one day, as I was walking through the back yard to begin a shift, I heard a shout from an upstairs window. A guy in one of the offices upstairs was leaning out of the window and he was shouting at me. He told me that I had got my transfer and that I was on my way to Bantry.
I just stood frozen to the spot. That wasn’t part of the plan. Bantry was so far out of the way for me that I would nearly have been better off staying in Dublin, at least I‘d have a main railway line. While I was trying to digest this, my friend upstairs was talking to someone in the room behind him. Then he stuck his head back out through the window again and he shouted that I was going to Bandon, not Bantry. This was a completely different kettle of fish and a hell of a lot closer to where I wanted to be.
I got into the station and went straight up the stairs to have a look at the paperwork just to satisfy myself that this was actually happening and wasn’t just a rumour or a wind up. Sure enough the paperwork was there and in clear print it stated that I was in fact going to Blarney. The idiots couldn’t read it properly but at least I was getting closer to home. And so it was that in April 1983, I arrived in Blarney.
Worry And Stress Should Be Avoided At All Costs
I came into contact with many people back then who are now, sadly, no longer with us and it underlines how short life is. For the eight years that I worked there I was part of the community and many of those I came to know through my work have departed this life and looking back on it, it wasn’t all that long ago that we were all together dealing with the stresses and strains of ordinary life. Now I wonder what all that worrying was about.
I can remember in the early noughties I was in Anglesea Street Garda Station working as the sergeant in the Communications Room. There were five or six of us who worked together regularly and we were responsible for taking calls from the public and sending the members to deal with the various incidents. We also monitored the CCTV cameras across the city and we were hub for all communications within the greater city area. It was a busy place, particularly at the weekends.
There was a clip board hanging on the wall next to my desk and it was loaded with important messages. There were faxes about incidents that needed certain action, reports that required special attention and instructions that had to be delivered to the troops on the street. The one thing that all these pieces of paper had in common was that they were all urgent. The sky was going to fall down around us if these instructions, guidelines, orders and points of special interest were ignored.
More pieces of paper would be added to the existing pile on the clipboard until it would eventually get to the stage where the contents would hang on for dear life until gravity finally won and the contents hit the floor. That was the time to put most of the stuff through the shredding machine to make room for the next load of essential reading which would surely make its way to the clipboard. These too would soon make their way to the shredder.
Anytime I saw young lads getting stressed at work or feeling the pressure from too much paperwork I would tell them about the clipboard. I would remind them that whatever was bothering them today would be consigned to the bin tomorrow. Problems are lessened with the passage of time and everything needs to be kept in perspective. Life is short enough without making our stay here any more difficult than it already is.
Don’t Clutter Up Your Mind With Rubbish
I remember working with a guy one time that worried himself to a frazzle. He was so bad that it actually damaged his health. I approached the sergeant one day and I suggested that maybe it would be a good idea to give him less responsibility and take the pressure off him. The sergeant was a senior character who had seen it all before and he said that it didn’t matter what job you gave him the result would be the same. He said that if you asked him to just sweep the street in front of the station every day he’d then worry about the dirt he was leaving behind. He was right of course.
There are some people who seem to be incapable of separating what’s important from what is trivial and for those, life can be a constant struggle. Their minds are, I suspect, a little bit like the clipboard on the wall in the Communications Room, full of clutter. How much better their lives would be if they could learn to de-clutter and dump the nonsense that’s taking up so much space in their minds. Life is meant for living and not for wasting time fretting.