I had 30 minutes to kill before a film over the weekend, this was just after the Cork game had finished.
The Oval l was rammed so I got a coffee and sat in Babushka Lyakhovich Park.
There were 4 junkies sitting at the South Main Street end by the upright obelisk that is a memorial to the late Con C. Rete. They were in various state of disrepair - broken teeth, no teeth, rail thin and one lad had a black eye that looked he'd asked Katie Taylor where her apron was.
The female among them seemed to be the group leader and started to get very performative in her interactions with them until finally she started pointing and waving as two young boys- neither of them could have been more than 15 - appeared by the fountain on an eScooter. Both of them were wearing puffa jackets and had matching Lego-man fringes.
The female junkie strode towards these boys still pointing, almost dancing, while the rest of the lads shuffling behind her in a somnambulistic conga line.
One of the young boys wordlessly made a "give me the money" gesture - palm facing up, fingers flicking back. Cash handed over, the other boy hauled up the front of his puffa, revealing a sling bag clasped around his chest and produced several little packets which he duly handed over to the woman.
"Now fuck off" said the cash handler with a dismissive wave. The junkies left via Tuckey St. and the two boys disappeared out via the grand parade.
This was in broad daylight - at half five on a Saturday evening in a park.
The biggest joke of it all was that there were two cops in their hi-vis and baseball cap 5 metres away who I am certain saw exactly what I (and everyone else) had seen but did nothing. Instead, a few minutes later, they decided to impose their power upon an Eastern European man who had clearly just finished a day's labour on a building site enjoying a cold bottle of Tyskie and some rotisserie chicken with his immaculately-dressed wife/girlfriend as they sat on a bench in the sushine.
