Galway has a battle between bulbs and brains!

We are a magnificent species. Evolving from the primordial soup to become sentient beings with flare, imagination, spirit and initiative, we’ve rid ourselves of all predators but each other. Yes, great white sharks and tigers can eat us, but they’re not going to before next Tuesday.

Lacking a predator, we take on each other. As children, we learn to beat-up our brothers and sisters. As adults, we go to war and kill each other.

Wars are not just those episodes we see on the news. There are many wars going on, permanently raging on several levels. Each war, in its own way, shows how brilliant and ingenious we are as a species, displaying the manifold methods we’ve dreamt of to screw ourselves up physically, mentally, spiritually and financially.

Each war has its own battles. In fact, there’s a small battle being fought around our lovely city at the moment. This war is between the realms of Order and Freedom, both ancient and noble causes. The battle, which sounds so mundane as to seem almost innocuous, concerns the replacement of roundabouts with traffic lights.

When I told you it sounded mundane I wasn’t kidding, but actually, far from dull, it’s a battle for the way our minds work.

Yesterday I left my mate’s place in Ballybane at 4.30pm. I needed to drive right across the city, just when schools were emptying and workers were leaving their shifts (because those who today work in the engine rooms of the economy don’t actually have jobs with security and benefits, but mere shifts for which they are made to feel grateful . . . don’t get me started!) and out the other side to the Clifden Road.

I know my way around Galway, so I zig-zagged, always aiming to be going the opposite direction to most of the traffic, and sure enough, I barely had to use my brake.

Crossing the river at Quincentenary Bridge, I took the right-hand lane for the roundabout. The left-hand lane was packed with ring-road and city centre traffic, but my side was clear, so I sailed around the roundabout and headed for home.

Hardly the stuff of Pulitzer prizes, but the point is that it felt good. I’d used initiative, knowledge and experience to avoid the endless (what is the collective noun? ‘Frustrations of’?) traffic lights. I’d been able to use my skill and judgement to drive smoothly, quickly and safely where, had there been a red light, I’d just have been stuck in a stagnant queue of traffic, staring at a completely empty junction, but unable to reach it.

I’m beginning to wonder if Geldof and his Rats weren’t spot on with their ‘walk don’t walk’ Rat Trap spittle back in ‘78.

At what point do we lose everything that makes humans splendid, by simply blindly obeying the rules?

Where once a car-free roundabout gave you the chance to sail through and feel human, you’re now sitting in front of a red light that’s forbidding you to drive through a completely empty junction onto an empty road.  

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.