Cyprus has been my home for 10 years come September 2018 and in that time I’ve got to know quite a lot about the island, its indigenous inhabitants and the expats of various nationalities. One of the main social forces on the island is the numerous saint, or name days.
One of the main ones that seems to come up very, very often is St. Pillock’s day. St. Pillock is the patron saint of stupid people and you can always tell when it’s St. Pillock’s day, because that’s the day all the idiots on the island take to the roads and do stupid things.
I came off the highway from Larnaca into our village yesterday and the problem here is most slip roads both off and on to the highway have tight bends. Ours is no exception and so you can’t see round the curve, not until you see a devotee of St. Pillock has stopped in the middle of the off ramp… it seems so that he could light a cigarette.
The most stunning fail I have ever seen from a devotee of St. Pillock is a guy with a pick-up truck parked in a street outside a bank. On the back of his pick-up was a very large metal box, almost as big as the pick-up. He had stopped there and popped into the bank. I was outside waiting to use the ATM. The man with the pick-up came out the bank and lit a cigarette (yes, cigarettes and pillocks do go hand in hand) got into his cab, started the engine, didn’t bother to look behind or indicate, revved the engine and pulled away… quickly. I assume he had forgotten he had a large metal box on the back of his truck and forget that he hadn’t bothered to tie it on. He drove off and the box stayed where it was until it was obvious the now vacant space below the box wasn’t going to support it.
The crash was resounding. St. Pillock strikes again.
A lot of this would seem to stem from the fact that some drivers like a tipple or two and that doesn’t just happen at Christmas. It’s particularly prevalent during the hunting season where hunters shoot their own feet, their pals and even their hunting dogs because they’re either stupid, a pillock or too drunk to care either way.
So far, touch wood, I’ve never had a nasty accident but know of plenty who have and their lives have never been the same, thanks to the curse of St. Pillock.
pillock
noun BRITISH informal
a stupid person.
“a complete pillock!”
Tom Kane © 2017
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