Bling of Truth

Sweary

We was tough as teenagers, me and mah girlies. We was ruthless, sassy, cool – the Pink Ladies crossed with a collaboration of frustrated crocodiles. We paraded up and down the mean streets of South County Galway, clicking our fingers in serendipitous unison, throwing ourselves into a smooth sidestep every ten paces; it’s a wonder we didn’t end up in the Atlantic, really. Every so often we’d encounter the slappers from North County Clare, and put-downs, hair-pulling, and majestic dance routines would ensue. They were happier, more dangerous times. I still proudly wear my Honda-Civic-shaped scar (one I got in the great body-poppin’ scrap of 1998) on my right forearm, or sometimes on my left, depending on the orientation of the pub I’m drinking in.

My cousin Balls was also a fifteen-year-old girl at one stage, although one hundred miles away and in a slightly less rural sense. Body-poppin’ had fallen out of favour in her ‘hood, so she tended to settle her disputes by simply …  I dunno, knifing people or whatever.

We took turns reminiscing about our teenage years as we wandered the streets of Cork the other day, less coordinated in our old age, both in movement and clobber.

“I remember how we would drink coffee in Supermacs,” I said. “Naturally, the boys were playing pool and vomiting into the gutter, but we were classy, unapproachable broads. Saved on nappies, in the long run.”

“We had a field,” said Balls, “which we would smoke in, and shout at passers-by whom we suspected to be paedophiles.”

“Fields were great,” I agreed, “for hiding one’s booze in. I had fifteen cans of Bulmers in the bottom of my wardrobe at one stage, and I never really felt comfortable about it.”

“Oh look” cooed Balls, swiftly turning on her heel in a manner redolent of the old days; I wiped away a tear. “Here’s the shop we used to get our sovereign rings from!”

“Your what?”

“Our sovereign rings!”

“What, for your boyfriends?”

“For our fucking selves, dickhead!”

I was horrified.

Sovereign rings on teenage girls? This is what passed for fashion statement in turn-of-the-millennium Cork? While we in Galway were marking our toughness with games of chicken played down boreens on souped-up Massey Fergusons, they were pimping out their fingers like common Greek businessmen? We were never tough enough to wear sovereign rings in Galway! Never! Not even the Traveller girls, who wore two bras for maximum Madonnishness and had more front than Salthill, wore sovereign rings.

I was gobsmacked, then cowed. I sulked as Balls pointed out which ring was sported by which of her homies, and only dragged her away with the promise of a goat’s cheese starter and a glass of Pinot Noir. Times change, you see, and bould teenage girls grow into urbane wits and liberals. But the tougher-than-thou competition in all Irish people, the compulsion to describe how poor your parents, how laborious your labour, how banjaxed your bank account, runs deep in all of us, and no Trinity College education or Jamie Oliver cookery course will truly knock that out of you. Sovereign fucking rings? What a bunch of scumbags!

The lucky, lucky bastards.

(More from Sweary at www.coddlepot.com)