They drove the family car into the wall and then ran away...

The Bad Pawn

Hey just looking for a bit of feedback on my writing style etc..below.


They drove the family car into the wall and then ran away..

I feel very pissed off.

I feel very pissed off and robbed.

Some man somewhere is sipping on a glass of good white wine and the sun glinting off the condensation running down the outside of the chilled vessel. As he sips – I choke and as he laughs - I grimace. You see i’m 30 years old, well-educated and living in Ireland. He is fifty-something and a ‘retired’ developer.. or perhaps he’s a banker or is it a politician… would that be a more fitting image, a banker sipping chilled wine in the sun while I sit with my angry face illuminated by my laptop screen?

So whats my problem. Do I begrudge somebody else their success? Definitely not. In fact I’m a firm believer in rewarding people on merit and supporting the free market and capitalism, but what I do hate is corruption and incompetence.

I hate the fact that because of our friend above is enjoying the finer things in life, I’m sitting here contemplating what my life will be like when I leave Ireland for good. I’m considering how it will break my parents heart to see me go and how my girlfriend is already crying at the prospect of leaving her mother here in Dublin. We now head to the other side of the world in search of opportunities which no longer exist within the borders of Ireland.

Shame on the bankers and the developers , you were trusted with our future but you stole it for yourselves.

Shame on the politicians, the senior civil servants and the regulators, you were trusted with our welfare but you sold us for slaves.

What a betrayal you laid on your own country. You made us look like fools in front of the world and are responsible for killing the dreams of generations.

I hate the way you made me feel about my own country and it’s government and I hate the way foreigners will now pre-judge me and my like when we open our mouths and are identified as Irish.

I’m leaving because there is nothing left here to stay for. I’m taking my education, my energy and my entrepreneurial spirit with me and you may never see them again. When I go I’ll be accompanied by many more just like me and when we talk we’ll mention the names of the people who were the architects of our exile. Make no mistake, those who caused this disaster will be remembered by us as tyrants. They drove the family car into a wall and then ran away …

The real problem is that the family was in the back….

pickarooney

l like a good, well-written rant. The bit about the condensation on the chilled vessel seems out of kilter with the rest; it's a bit too composed an image. For a good rant you want sentences that are either short and powerful or ones that build up into a crescendo of bile and to use direct language - no shilly-shallying about with synonyms for the sake of it.

I'm not too sold on the metaphor of the car. It's there in the title and at the end but seems unrelated to the rest of the piece. Maybe if you kept a theme of car-related imagery throughout it would gel better but to be honest I don't think it holds up that well. Generally people in the front of a car which runs head-first into a wall will come out of it badly, airbags or no airbags.

It's tough to get a good mix of controlled rage and sharp words but you have plenty of subject matter to play with.