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Sweary
Skangers. Scobes. Howyas. Chavs. Townies. Knackers. We don’t like any of them, sure we don’t.
All of the above are derogatory terms for members of a certain strata of society, and by that pompous statement, I mean the working class. Oh, I know that no one’s suggesting that every working class person in Ireland is the kind of lowlife that could be battered with one of the aforementioned insults; after all, we like to think we have a strong tradition for breeding ordinary decent folk in Ireland, the kind that roll over with their arses in the air upon seeing a bank manager or other predator stalk the highways and byways. Skangers are what happens when ordinary decent folk stop giving a shit about bank managers, and as such should be avoided at all costs.
What of now, though, when we’re all avoiding the bank manager and growling at the powers that be from the dilapidated porches we installed in 2002 and are still paying off?
I’m from Council House land. Whole legions of me most respectable buddies have a Council House past. Post-Tiger, we got all snooty in our definitions and started associating council houses with Burberry baseball hats, scary single mothers, junkies and state-relocated paedophiles, but I remember when pretty much everyone whose dad wasn’t a solicitor lived in a council house. It was nothing unusual for young families to “do their time” in a state-owned 3-bed, provided for them because there was no one in Ireland flush enough to buy their own homes whilst still being young enough to populate the country. Owning a house was something that happened to publicans and parish priests. The rest of us worked, dropped babies, and built up our savings so that by the time the babas were in their teens, we were putting deposits on bungalows on the outskirts. Then the Celtic Tiger happened, and we all became middle class, and the days of the ordinary decent skanger were numbered.
Because once we all became middle class, who were left in the council estates? Settled travellers who’d rather spend their money on gold-plated taps than on mortgage brokers, English hippies avoiding the Public Order Act of 2004, and shorn-headed lunatics with pitbulls called Tyson, that’s who! And so now the council estate is no longer a community in infancy, the first legitimate step on the housing ladder: now it’s the scariest place in the town, where roaring teenagers congregate and mothers have tattoos on their bingo wings… which is a pity, coz we’re all going back there to re-colonise the gaff. Needs fucking must.
Oh yes. The revolution has begun, even if we have to be dragged backwards into it, kicking and screaming with our legs splayed and our sinews snapping. No more frappuccinos. No more school waiting lists. No more Afghan hounds, stag weekends in Riga, and photos in R.S.V.P magazine. Brush up your twisty-mouthed slang and polish the chip on your shoulders, kiddies, because due to your granddad’s generation robbing you knackered, it’s back to the council estates for you!
The Arse End just got bigger. Welcome home.
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