Being stopped on the motorway is the most cruel and unnatural of things

IT WAS one of those inexplicable traffic jams. A traffic jam coming out of Dublin, writes Colm O’Regan. 

In theory everyone should have been galloping out of the city with giddy abandon like young calves gambolling in a spring meadow, delighted at being free from the dungy-strawed shed that is the capital.

But it wasn’t. With the whole of the country to fan out into, we still all got stuck somewhere around the first stubbled barley fields of West Dublin. Craning our neck, or sometimes craning the car’s neck, to see what the hold-up is. Furious. We are probably victims of a ripple effect somewhere up along the road. A truck-driver, unhappy at not being able to do 60 miles an hour, taking 14 miles to overtake another truck-driver who was doing 59. Someone behind taps on the brakes. The person behind them presses the brakes for 10% longer. It propagates so much back along the road that where I am, we could all get out and have a sing-song and share stories about the old days.