A big summer cleanup has started around here. The local Tidy Towns committee – led by an unholy alliance of Lily Mac, Superquinn and Percy Pipplemoth Davis – has launched a “monster” campaign to clean and decorate the village “in advance of the arrival of the first tourists”.

As far as I’m concerned, the place is in grand order as it is and, as for the tourists, the only tourists I ever meet around here are lost and looking for directions to somewhere else.

As a local councillor – and supposedly concerned citizen – I had to show up for the cleanup and pretend to be interested.

The meetings are held outside the parish hall, with everyone standing in a circle with shovels and brushes and hedge clippers at the ready. In our high-vis jackets we must look like a bunch of bees deciding which flower garden to descend on next.

I’m a reluctant participant. My days at the recycling depot are spent in a yellow jacket tidying up the mess created by the whole of south Tipperary – I don’t need to be spending my spare time doing the same thing in my own village.

But as a public representative I have no choice – and when your local political rival is involved you have to show up, if only to keep an eye on him.

With all this in mind, I find myself turning up at the village hall three evenings a week with a high-vis and a sour puss on me.

After the next election I think I’ll get obstreperous and tell people to feck off. I should be retiring at the end of that term anyway, so it won’t matter to me politically. I’ll do what I want, when I want and won’t be at the beck and call of gob-daws like Percy.

All that’s for another day, for now I’m on the streets of Killdicken two or three evenings a week watering flower pots, weeding hanging baskets and picking up choc-ice wrappers, Tayto bags and the odd unmentionable.

What makes it worse is that most people think I’m being paid to do this. Every night I’m sure to get a string of comments from members of the public. “Begod, Maurice, the overtime must be great,” they say. Or: “Jaysus, Hickey, you’re cleanin’ up in more ways than one.”

There is no peace for the much-maligned councillor. I’m too quiet, that’s my problem: too quiet and too nice. One of these days I’ll cut loose, speak my mind and become as awkward as a badly hung gate.

I began to imagine what it would be like to be a completely cantankerous auld hoor. My grandfather, God be good to him, was like that. He was a cross and cranky auld cobbler who got into politics to unseat a local councillor who wouldn’t pay his bill.

My father took over the seat because of pressure from the grandfather’s supporters, and I took it over because I had nothing better to do.

I wonder if there’s any of the grandfather in me? I know that he wouldn’t be found going around the streets in the evening picking up everyone else’s rubbish. “If they want to live in shite, that’s their problem,” he’d say. “Next thing they’ll expect us to wipe their noses and polish their shoes for them.”

Thinking thoughts such as these, I made my reluctant way to the gathering outside the hall yesterday evening. Percy Pipplemoth was in full flight, giving orders about what to do and instructions on how to pick up rubbish and water flowers “properly”. He was like Francis Brennan on steroids.

I was given a watering can and told to water the pots and hanging baskets on Main Street. “If you run out of water, just knock on a door and ask the occupant to fill it for you. It will remind them that we’re here and working hard for them. No canvassing now, Maurice,” he warned. He can feck off.

I ran out of water at the flowerpot outside Madge McInerney’s house. I knocked and asked Madge to fill me up, which she duly did. We stood at her door chatting about life in general and nothing in particular when Percy appeared in full flight: “Maurice Hickey, is this as far as you got? For goodness sake, I’d have this street watered twice over. Come on, come on.”

“Oh,” says I to Percy, “myself and Madge were wondering if it’s greenfly or caterpillar that’s eating the flowers in this pot.”

“I don’t believe you. Let me see,” says he, leaning over the said pot. As he did I took my watering can and emptied the contents on top of him.

“Now,” says I, “that’s the last weed I’ll be waterin’ around here for a while.”

I went home and made tay for myself. CL