Have farmers gone off their trolleys?
Afraid that farmers might have all the trolleys chained up, she turned to me in her hour of need.
“Of course I will,” says I, putting on the transport box to the back of the tractor. A fellow needs no shopping trolley when he has a transport box. And, later, with the shopping done, I turned to leave the supermarket car park, only to spot a herd of protesting farmers chained up to a trolley bay.
“Up the farmers,” I roared out the broken window of my tractor, in support of my comrades in chains. My transport box full to overflowing with messages, my heart full to overflowing with pride at my brothers in farming finally making a stand.
“But why, oh why,” cried my wife, when I returned home, “are they chaining up trolleys? What’s the point in marching around a trolley bay? What have trolleys got to do with beef troubles?”
“In the name of God, woman,” I responded, “who said the protests are about the plight of beef farming?”
“Of course ’tis about the beef,” says she, “isn’t that what’s written on their placards?”
“Yerra, that’s only a distraction,” I said. “If it was a protest about beef, they’d surely be holding it outside a meat factory someplace and not a supermarket.”
“To my mind, what the farmers protesting outside the supermarkets are really highlighting is the similarity between your average shopping trolley and the Irish farmer. That’s the point of the thing. Sure, that’s as clear as day.”
My missus was having none of it. She told me I was “talking rubbish as usual.” Then, she placed a fresh cup of tea in front of me, with a nice bun to accompany it, and, with little else to do but relax, I went on talking about the trolley protest, regardless of her opinion.
“You see,” I continued, “the supermarket shopping trolley, just like the farmer, is constantly being pushed around from place to place. Worked hard all day long hauling produce here and there. And then, just like the farmer at the end of it all, what has the trolley got to show for it? A big fat nothing.”
“The shopping trolley is always the one left empty- handed when the work is done. It’s the very same with those who work the land.”
The farmer and the shopping trolley have a great deal in common. And, of course, nowadays there is a compartment in the trolley to carry youngsters, even babies. Just like in modern farming, the trolley has evolved. These days a modern trolley has to make space for the child, just like the modern farmer.
“The similarities are frightening,” I said. “’Tis no wonder protesting farmers are focusing all their energy on the shopping trolley.”
And then, getting emotional, I added. “Have you ever come across a stiff old shopping trolley in a supermarket, a fellow with a crooked wheel?”
“I have,” said my missus.
“A machine so banjaxed it cannot be steered straight, a trolley cast adrift from society, a trolley only fit for the scarp heap?”
“I have,” says she.
“Well, that will be me and every other farmer in Ireland in a couple of years time. We will be like the old shopping trolleys that nobody desires.”
“My dear man,” says my missus. “I believe you have finally gone off your trolley.”
