“I have qualms about men maligning my sex”

No point in lying, if a man made a sexist statement such as this, I’d be irked — especially if the research that led him to his conclusion was as light on science and heavy on anecdote as mine.

I’d bristle with irritation and feel compelled to ask for substantiation so I could begin to make a stout defence of women.

But my defence would be cheery; I wouldn’t like to give the impression that I was a humourless old virago, hair-shirted by prickly feminist dogma, even if I was one.

The fact is, I have qualms about men maligning my sex and qualms about maligning it myself. In the case of ban gardaí, however, I’m quite happy to override them.

My dealings with the gardaí have been minimal; I’ve watched Shawshank Redemption, it’s taught me everything I haven’t wanted to know about prison and I’m extremely careful about not doing anything that might land me in one. My record is squeaky clean, apart from:

A. Driving while applying lipstick using the overhead mirror (which caused me to ‘drive a bit erratically back there ma’am.’)

B. Driving while a broken wing mirror swung on its cable into the passenger door, drumming a rhythm that alerted a garda to the fact that I was committing an offence as he stood on the kerb outside a chipper.

C. Driving with bald tyres, broken windscreen wipers, a left indicator that couldn’t be switched off and a passenger door fastened shut with duct tape.

D. Driving with a rear number plate in boot.

E. Driving with out-of-date tax and no NCT.

F. Speeding.

NB: I confess I’ve committed offence B and F once or twice and offences in C were not all on the same car so this has bumped up my garda interface time.

Offence F, incidentally, was not boy-racer style … but this is beside the point.

The point is, that whenever a male garda has dealt with offences A to F, the experience has been perfunctory yet pleasant. In contrast, when I’ve been hapless enough to fall foul of ban gardaí, I’ve been administered the verbal equivalent of a pull-your-pants-down-and-bend-over-spanking.

I gathered fresh proof this week, when I was stopped by a man garda on Monday and a ban garda on Tuesday, for committing offence B.

You couldn’t find a more perfect Spot-the-Difference Exercise to Prove that ban gardaí are Meaner than their Male Counterparts.

In Spot-the-Difference Example 1, the man garda apprehended me at a checkpoint. He had difficulty reading my driver’s licence because the pages were slippery to touch from a recent jojoba-oil spillage and stuck together with nicotine gum but he managed it with genial aplomb. While I wriggled around trying to find an excuse for my lapsed tax, he raised a friendly eyebrow and when I found one, let it pass for the feeble rubbish it was. He fined me €60 without any trace of relish and suggested that I book an NCT … (and do something about that gum).

After which he said a quick hello to the girls in the back (the devil is in the detail), smiled, gave the car-roof a couple of jolly pats and raised his hand in a laconic salute.

In Example 2: at a set of traffic lights in Cork, I was apprehended by a ban garda. After checking out my tax disc she puffed up her chest, whipped out a walkie-talkie with an officious flourish, murmured into it, fixed me with a gimlet stare and approached my window. When she dropped her face to mine, it already looked badly pissed off. She took the jojoba oil and gum as a personal and deliberate affront. She fined me €60 with perceptible relish and gave a cool, cursory nod to my daughters (which they described later as ‘the evils’), sitting ramrod straight in the back.

“If the address you’ve supplied is correct,” she said, re-puffing her chest, “at this present moment, you’re a very long way from home.” She wondered, if she were to seize my car, how my daughters (more of ‘the evils’ to both) might feel about the long walk home. Did I think my daughters would appreciate a walk of that length or thank me for it? If I didn’t mind her saying so, she didn’t think they would.

“And in fairness, ma’am, blaming your husband for not having out-of date tax is a very poor excuse … very, very poor in fairness, ma’am — you’re not 16.” Spot the difference.