Last picture of Galbally gritter, 1984.

Tensions were rising throughout the day as the Galbally Roads Council buildings came under attack from a snowballing mob after pictures on Facebook showed a gritter in force outside their offices in the early hours of the morning. Galbally Roads Council have consistently stated they haven’t had any grit-salt since they ran out during the sharp frost in 1984 and that they’d sold the gritter itself fifteen years ago to some boy in Latvia. They also claim that the next shipment of salt is not expected until 2018. However, clear images displayed an old decrepit gritter spraying salt ‘like mad’ around the front car park of the Council offices. The local PP, Fr Gary Sheehan, was unimpressed:

“What a shower of wankers! We’ve been driving on glass for 28 years now in the winter because them lads said the salt had run out and the next batch was to be a fair few years away. That’s OK. I can accept that. But the pictures taken last night by a few revellers coming home from the Galbally Arms tell a different story. It’s clear now that them wretched tramps have been gritting their own premises and probably around their own houses using the same gritter that was apparently tearing up Latvia. I’m going to snowball the bollocks off them.”

The Galbally Roads Council vehemently deny the existence of the original gritter and initially contented that the lads were making stuff up or blattered out of their heads. When presented with the photographic evidence, chairman Kevin Molloy took a different stance:

“Ah Jays, that could be anywhere. Sure there’s another place called Galbally in Limerick. That might be their offices. Even if it is our building, that could well be some kind of ghostly apparition from the previous gritter than was here or some kind of time warp thing caused by the solar flares or the Internet photoshopping or something. The divil a bit of it. Sure where’s the gritter now then?”

A mass gritter-hunt has begun in the townland with hundreds of Galballians combing the fields and barns for the phantom gritter. The Facebook page which revealed the initial image has been inundated with comments with the majority just simply stating ‘bastards’.