Walking from Pearse Street toward Nassau Street in the mornings is a very strange experience. If you time it just right, you’ll be in the middle of about thirty people walking in the same direction as you.

What makes it funny is their all regulars. There’s tall woman with the strong perfume, Small woman with the strong perfume, Man on the phone, man with the really noisy shoes, Man listening to loud music and woman in a hurry to name a few. They all even have their certain place that they stand at when crossing the road in front of Pearse station. Tall woman with the strong perfume stands before the lights but for some reason she always cuts in front of me when I’m crossing. She’s easy to hear. She’s got such a long stride and I have often wondered if she’s that tall because instead of high heels she’s wearing stilts. With the sound of them I think they must be huge. Small woman stands right beside the traffic light pole. She seems friendly enough as well. I’ve spoken to her a few times on the way to the station in the evenings. I know she lives in Drogheda but she sounds like she’s originally from the centre of Dublin.

We’re all on a mission. All determined to make our way to the hamster wheel. All rushing to sit in our corner of our box for the day. Even with this inevitable doom looming in our immediate future we all walk with purpose, and conviction taking in these last moments of freedom before work begins for yet another day. We’re all in a procession. Marching to the tune of routine, responsibility, expectation and anticipation. It sounds like a funeral that’s been sped up. All these people wearing their formal footwear make a very definitive sound. It is similar to what you would hear if a funeral procession began running down the road instead of taking their time. The only time the sound of the marching masses is broken is when a few school girls come shuffling past babbling and chattering while dragging their feet.

At the drive in entrance to Trinity College some of our group peel off. The ordered line of people now becomes more widely spaced. Turning on to Nassau Street some people make a run for it. There the rebels. The free thinkers. The idiots that try to get themselves killed by running in front of traffic just to get to their hamster wheel that few seconds early. The lights no more than a few meters away would pose an unacceptable delay to their journey to captivity. By the time we get to the last traffic light at my crossing there are three of us left. We’re the last hamsters standing.

I’m taking a lot of pleasure in this march to damnation in the morning. Since June of last year I’ve had to hold back and let this crowd go ahead of me. It wasn’t possible to walk with that volume of people using the Cain. Now that Ike is becoming more comfortable in crowds we’re holding our own.

It just made me laugh this morning so I thought it was worth briefly writing about it.