words to the wise

All day I'd been snapping at this one and that about nothing in particular.
And then I'd quickly apologise.
It was a constant refrain of "sorry, sorry, sorry," until nightfall.
I arrived home at the chateau late in the evening and met the mother in the hall.
"Sorry Mother," sez I.
"Sorry for what?" sez she.
"Sorry for whatever the hell it is I'm about to say next," quoth I warmly.
The Lildebeest patted me on the arm.
"Arrah don't worry about it," she told me. "Sure you don't know what you're saying half the time. It's probably just your leg upsetting you. We all understand you're under pressure at the moment."
Then in case this seemed too maudlin she added:
"Ye gouty oul fecker."

an open letter to jorge luis zapatero

Dear Mr Zapatero.
A word in your ear about the Socialist Party success in last week's Spanish elections.
I predict you have now personally assured at least thirty more years of power for the socialists in Spain.
You have accomplished this through two simple procedures.

1. When Islamic terrorists murdered two hundred people on trains in Madrid during 2003 you chose to use the atrocity for short term political advantage. Instead of offering to form a government of national unity to fight Muslim terror, you accused your conservative opponents of misleading the public with their suggestion that the murders might have been carried out by the Basque separatist group Eta. It was a cheap manoeuvre Mr Zapatero. If the Jihadis have shown nothing else, they have shown how cheap ambitious political spivs like yourself will sell out to Islamic terror just to get a few years in office. Witness Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama currently vying to outdo each other in demeaning both their country and their President. Witness Gordon Brown sidling into the Prime Ministership of Great Britain. Witness the abysmal socialist government of Italy who like you scraped into power and then couldn't surrender to the Jihadis quick enough. Of course Mr Zapatero, you and I know that the low life Islamic terrorist scum from Morocco who murdered those 200 people in Madrid, did not commit their murders without help from local terrorists. That is to say, without help from the Basque separatist group Eta. The movement of explosives, the logistics of the operation, the implementation of it, is unlikely to have happened without Eta's assistance. In Ireland our homegrown terrorists the IRA always had links with Palestinian terrorists. They had links with the Palestinians, with Colonel Gadaffi, with the Syrians, with the Farc of Colombia, and with any such bastards they could find. In fact anyone with a beard advocating dictatorship and mass murder was considered an ally. I put it to you: there's no doubt Eta runs with the same crew. We both know it. And we both know that you were the candidate the Islamic Nazis of Al Qaeda wanted to win that election. And we both know that's why they bombed those people. And we both know Al Qaeda's success in ensuring your election Mr Zapatero in 2003 led directly to a similar attempt to alter the results of a British election in 2005, when peaceloving Muslims detonated bombs on trains and buses, murdering 50 people. Only they didn't effect the British election results in any way. Because, with the exception of their journalists, the Brits are made of sterner stuff. Tony Blair, the Churchill of the hour and a true socialist hero, confounded the plush bottomed quislings and chattering defeatists of the BBC, Channel Four, The Guardian, The Times, and all the rest, to win a third straight term in office. But the blood of London's innocents is on your hands Mr Zapatero.

2. Having won the 2003 election by a narrow margin, you immediately withdrew from the war on terror, standing down the Spanish soldiers who had so valiantly held the line up till then. Then you did a most curious thing. Within weeks of winning the 2003 election, you gave Spanish citizenship to several hundred thousand Muslim immigrants. With the stroke of a pen. You and I both know, that whether or not any of these people ever decide to while away an afternoon blowing up trains, buses or aeroplanes in the future, whether or not I say, they will still vote socialist in perpetuity. Not many of them will ever vote conservative, will they? And you've won the 2008 election haven't you? And you're looking forward to another thirty years of socialist power, aren't you? And that's all that really matters, isn't it?

Congratulations on your election victory.
Your Spanish Socialist Party may actually outlast Spain.
And the Spanish for coward is Zapatero.

Best wishes.
James Healy.

moonrise over the heartland

this

JMJT


My cousin Mycroft walked into the bookshop.
She browsed.
She saw a copy of The Exorcist.
She picked it up.
She felt a constricting pressure on her chest and experienced a feeling of the presence of evil.
She put down the book and left.

I was very struck by her account of this experience.
Why should she be given a spiritual perception like this when I, at the age of thirteen, picked up The Exorcist without a qualm, without so much as the tinkle of an ethereal alarm bell, without so much as a nudge from my guardian angel, read it from cover to cover, and then spent the next twenty five years sleeping with the light on?!

I was struck by Mycroft's anecdote for another reason.
Some years ago I came across a book about the supposedly real events on which The Exorcist had been based.
The book was written by a competent liberal leftwing American journalist who had worked for some of the biggest names in news reporting.
I would not be a fan but I would recognise that sometimes these sort of atheistic guys are better at digging for the truth than those of us who pretend to be Christian.
In the book he put a pseudo scientific slant on his version of the facts behind The Exorcist.
He still managed to leave the door open for supernatural explanations.
He offered an intriguing insight.
At the time of the alleged events, the American city in which the events occurred, was rocked by racial tensions.
The journalist speculated that the race hate generated by the situation, the sheer spite people felt towards each other, had opened the door for evil spirits.
This speculation came back to me when I heard Mycroft's story.

It came back to me because I was thinking of my own writings on the war on terror.
Did I, in hating Arab Islamic terrorism, did I start to hate Arabs and Muslims generally?

Spite is a name for satan.
I reject spite.
Long live Jesus Christ the king.

the hindu genius

divya sharma

(Photographer: Sujay Sapele, Bombay, 2005.)

great moments in sport part one

Father Andrew stuck his head in the door at the old chateau.
He espied my feminist cousin Pauline sitting in the kitchen.
I could hear what passed next from the relative sanctity and sanity of the television room.
"Ah," sez he, "the femi-Nazi."
She said nothing of course.
I can only guess what sort of look she gave him.
Presently I heard the Padre banging out the front door.

reverie

last night
by the riverside
i saw myself
a ten year child
with vincent berney
and john martin
in youthful incarnations
fight and run and hide

then was i
desolate and morose
dust took the image
even the living have ghosts