Colm O'Regan: Taoiseach Martin, here’s an idea for you: Road Bowling for All
For anyone who doesn’t know, road bowling involves throwing a small cannonball down the road as far as you can to complete a course in as few throws. Picture: ©INPHO/Tom Honan.
You kind of know something is up on the road ahead. It feels like an excitement in the air as you approach in your car. There’s a couple of men on the road looking alert, not quite walking, more sort of standing with purpose, wearing hi-vis so something is ‘on’. But there’s no church, hall, War of Independence site commemoration nearby.
No big funeral has come up on the RIP.ie email alert. It’s the wrong time of the year for silage. It can’t be an ambush. Ambushers don’t wear hi-vis. They seem very mildly put out by your presence. They wave at you to slow down.
If they’re not moving cattle, it could only be one thing: Bowling. Not the Big Lebowski 10-pin or the lawn-bowls that Hyacinth Bucket’s father might disrupt with a nude display. It’s something more iconic: road bowling. Pronounced ‘bowelling’. Which sounds like a euphemism.
For anyone who doesn’t know, road bowling involves throwing a small cannonball down the road as far as you can to complete a course in as few throws. Its strongholds are Cork and Armagh as if that was the start and finish point of some legendary match between Fionn MacCumahill and the Giant Gruach Mac Scluach.
It even made it into the Netflix show-about-a-podcast-about a West Cork murder, Bodkin. Although from what I could see, there was no actual footage of the bowl going down the road.
Just some metallic sound effects and fellas windmilling their arms. Also, there weren’t enough yehups! And a farmer at the end offered someone “a ride into town” which would get you cancelled if you said it in real life.
I slow down to stop. 28 ounces of an iron ball comes surging down the road towards me and I just wait with the serenity of a man driving an old car. But the bowl goes under the car neatly and onwards. I have not affected the competition and the bowl hasn’t gone clean through the car leaving a circular Looney Tunes-style hole.
I love that road bowling happens. Not only because it’s a guaranteed supplier of regular All-Irelands in Cork but also because it’s a type of thing that gets rarer in Ireland by the year. People hanging around The Road.
Roads have got faster because surfaces and cars are no longer mostly Crocks-a-shite. There is no longer the impediment to travelling fast that there used to be. You wouldn’t do much more than 40mph before because the shuddering just felt wrong.
Like you were re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. As a result, people aren’t on the road. How many do you know have said a sentence like, “Janey I wouldn’t walk that road NOW! The speed!”
That’s why when you see crowds of people just slowing the road with their game, it’s a nice two-fingers to the Rule of the Car. By people who all have to drive the rest of the week anyway. So, it’s an inside job.
In Dripsey as well as a bit of road bowling they also have a poc fada on Stephens's Day. What a lovely sight it is to see an area’s finest just out owning the road. If you’re driving, you’ll have to slow down.
Wouldn’t it be great to take back more roads for sport and messing. Redefine them a little bit. They’re not just car-tracks. Roads connect communities in other ways. Crossroads used to be venues. Why not now?
There is a lot of talk about active travel but not enough about less-active roads.
So now, Taoiseach Martin, here’s an idea for you: Road Bowling for All. It’s road safety, exercise, active travel, community cohesion, (unless there are fights about the results), more All Irelands for Cork all wrapped up in one small cannonball. It’s worth a shot.
- Colm brings his latest comedy show to Coughlans Live on April 12. Tickets can be purchased by visiting Coughlans.ie.
