Hours of endless screaming engines and skidding tyres

SO. Around 7.30pm on a Saturday night in the rural West Cork countryside, less than an hour’s drive from Cork city centre.

I was in bed early with a head-cold, paracetamol, tissues and John Creedon’s book, An Irish Folklore Treasury; A Selection of Old stories, Ways and Wisdom from the School’s Collection.

The book is based on the visionary campaign of the 1930s, which tasked Irish schoolchildren with collecting stories and superstitions from old people; tales of ghosts and shape-shifters, banshees, folk remedies, piseogs, self-sufficiency, and pastimes.

This material, recorded by more than 5,000 children across the 26 counties in their copybooks with the support of their teachers, resulted in the National Folklore Archive’s Schools Collection.

I had just finished Creedon’s own tale of how his elderly father actually knew a man who lived through the Famine, and was starting to read about the bustling self-sufficiency of our ancestors, when the first loud mechanical whines sounded outside on the road.

The mosquito squeal of over-worked engines and the screeching of speeding, skidding tyres was unmistakable.

I got up and looked out the window. I couldn’t see anything.

I returned to my book and read about time-intensive housekeeping, animal husbandry, vegetable growing, and busy people making their own rope and even their own clothing. How people entertained themselves with riddles and proverbs and stories and games in a long ago and very different Ireland.

Again, the calm was shattered by screaming engines, the hallmark of today’s idle, entitled and aggressive youngsters entertaining themselves on public roads.

“They’re going to kill someone,” I said anxiously to my husband when he brought up a cup of tea. Eventually, I closed the bedroom windows and tried to sleep.

Impossible. The high-pitched whines, the screaming engines and skidding tyres were remorseless. Every time I thought they had finally stopped, it returned.

I couldn’t sleep. I kept imagining a couple driving home through these narrow, winding roads and coming up against these marauding bullies.

Around 11pm, I gave in and called the gardaí. They knew all about it. Where was I living, they asked. I gave them the Eircode. I told them about the hours of endless, remorseless, skidding of tyres and screaming of brakes outside the gate.

They had a patrol car on it, the garda said.

“You’ll need more than one,” I said anxiously. “It’s like the Wild West out there. Somebody’s going to be killed. What’s happening?”

Young fellas organised circuits over social media and gangs of them gathered to speed through the network of selected roads, I was told.

“You’re unlucky tonight. Your road is on their circuit,” he commented.

The garda tried to be reassuring. He said they’d send out another car. But I wasn’t reassured. Not at all.

I was far too busy thinking of the recent newspaper stories about Garda management’s policy of discouraging patrol cars from chasing down these hoodlums.

I was too busy wondering about how such anti-social people had the energy for screaming at hair-raising speeds around the countryside at night.

About why a spineless nanny state won’t deal with these people in the correct manner.

I thought about how the same spineless nanny state has failed to resource and empower the gardaí to stop this carry-on.

I thanked my lucky stars that it wasn’t me or my husband in that lone police car out there, trying to hold the line against these lunatics.

I thought about the young father from Cork who died recently while reportedly chasing a gang of youngsters from his property who had been terrorising his neighbourhood.

I thought about his partner, who has begun a campaign for a new law, clamping down, at least, on juvenile crime and anti-social behaviour.

The idea, blinding in terms of its simplicity and potential efficacy, is to hit the wallets and purses of families who allow their under-18s to run - or drive - around terrorising communities. She wants them fined.

She wants gardaí to be empowered to deal effectively with juveniles.

And she wants interventions rehabilitating young gangsters to be made mandatory.

Aggressive behaviour from some teenage gangs is reportedly on the increase in towns around the county, and country.

A plethora of sports, as well as scouts, brownies and other organisations, are available, yet some youngsters choose to throw stones and eggs at windows, shout abuse at people and post their shenanigans on Snapchat.

How has the beautiful land and the thrifty, hard-working, self-sufficient, decent and respectful people of John Creedon’s book descended into such a state of idleness and aggression?

How has such viciousness, lawlessness, lack of respect and lack of any sense of community spirit and accountability in so many parents and their offspring become so common?

When will the government put an end to the shenanigans of idle, vicious young thugs who - in some cases at least - appear to be acting with the complicit backing of idle, entitled, vicious parents? Any thoughts on it Helen? Leo? Drew?