the greatest crimes are the crimes against human dignity

Morning in my world.
The noble Heelers is sitting in the kitchen at the old chateau.
He is clutching his srón.
(Irish for nose. - Rod note.)
Enter the Mammy stage left accompanied by a Paddy Pup.
"What's wrong with you?" quoth she.
"My nose is bleeding," explains Ireland's greatest living poet.
"Well stop picking it then," sez the Mammy heading for the kettle.
I find her instruction, the manner in which it is delivered, and the assumptions underlying it, to be more than a little offensive.
"Mother," I say with that famous hauteur some of you have come to know and love. "Mother..."
I've got the hauteur routine just perfect bold readers.
Only I can think of nothing to say.
My exit stage right is magnificent.

it's a wonderful life

Foghorn Leghorn took me to the corner of a downtown street in one of the trendier sections of New York.
We were standing outside the dizzyingly portentous skyscraper headquarters of the Bank of America.
"What are we doing here?" I murmured.
Foghorn Leghorn slapped the back of my head with his wing.
"Just be patient for a moment there boy," he chided. "I say Heelers, you just, you just be patient there now for a goshdarned moment. And try not to look so miserable boy. Heaven would, I say heaven would have sent, Heaven would have sent Jimmy Stewart boy, only it was, it was his day off."
We stood motionless amid the flurry of heartlessly beautiful people traversing the sidewalk.
Presently a devil red Ferrari Testarossa roared up the street and screeched to a halt outside the bank.
A masked bandit, carrying a machine gun, scrambled from the driver's seat and ran into the bank.
"What the hell is this?" I exclaimed in spite of myself.
Foghorn Leghorn hit me again on the back of the head with his wing.
"I say Heelers," he fumed, "I say Heelers. I keep telling you boy, I keep on a telling you, I keep a telling you, to pay attention when I'm showing you something boy. Don't, I say don't ask so many questions."
The bandit exited the bank carrying a single overstuffed sack. Loose dollar bills spilled from it at our feet.
The bandit ran past us.
The bandit's shapely form and piled high hair proclaimed her to be a girl bandit.
Her cutesy cry of "oh sugar" as a couple of cop cars appeared further up the street, proclaimed her to be a particular girl bandit of my acquaintance.
"Hoddlebun," I cried.
"The one, and I say one, and I say thank the Lord the only one," crowed Foghorn Leghorn.
Hodders' devil red Ferrari Testarossa roared away with the cops in hot pursuit.
The cosmopolitan carefreedom of New York eddied back into the space they left behind.
(Rodneyed back surely? - Ed note.)
Foghorn Leghorn stood with me on the pavement for long moments staring up the street.
I was the first to speak.
"So that's what she does for money if I never exist," I mused.

out of the mouths of babes and mammys

Morning at the Chateau de Healy.
I'm quaffing coffee with the Lildebeest.
The conversation scintles.
"Someone told me they thought all my recent health stuff might have been a message from the almighty," sez I.
The Mammy enquires as to who might have been the origin of this sublime observation.
"You know Lisa in London. The one who runs the emergency response unit. She's all career, career, career. She said that a few months ago she was immobilised with back pain and had to have an operation. She concluded the pain had been the only way God could get her attention. That it was his way of telling her to slow down and think again about what's really important."
A speculative look comes into the Mammy's eyes.
"He can't have been telling you to slow down," she points out reasonably...

when the revolution was expected in china

in the garden of my father
i first heard the gunshots from tianamen square
i will never drink again that beauty
without hearing first the crying of the dying there

we will pray sometimes in the evenings
as the shadows lengthen into years
for there are prayers much softer than silence
and silences softer than tears

angels and devils

This in my inbox.

From: Michael Appourchaux.
For the attention of: Shamie Healy.
What's wrong with you? You send me two pressing messages in the space of a few days. Then I reply with news. And nothing back from you. I say this is somewhat baffling.
Cheers anyway.
Mickey Porkchops.

It's him bold readers.
Appershocks.
The left ham of the devil.
The ersatz star of the 1996 production of my ersatz play Vampires Of ersatz Dublin.
The man some French critics are calling "the new Depardieu."
Shamie Healy indeed.
A good one.
Nearly worthy of the master.
I'd gotten his email address from a certain Leticia Agudo who directed him in the 1996 film Shift.
And I'd dropped him a line suggesting he get in touch.
Tonight I wrote to him again.

From: Me.
To: Michael Appershocks.
Dear Sir.
I admit I wrote to you with a view to renewing old acquaintance and reminiscing harmlessly about the past.
Only I did not expect to discover your own career and accomplishments in life would have so far surpassed my own.
I can contemplate no further contact with you.
Adieu.
James Healy

When I'd sent this email, an angel from heaven appeared at my shoulder in the form of Foghorn Leghorn.
He said: "I say, I say Heelers. Look at me when I'm talking to you Heelers. I say Heelers, hold your head up there boy. I'm a gonna show you Heelers, I'm a gonna show you, what life would have been like if, if, I say if, you a hadda never existed."
I nodded grimly.
"Foghorn bloody Leghorn," I muttered. "The least I was expecting was Jimmy Stewart."

two trees

The two trees frame Uncle Bernard and Aunty Mary's house.

The trees represent Bernard and Mary separately and together.

In these months with branches bare, you can see each distinctive tree as an individual.

In Summer in their glorious sheen of leafen green, they appear as one tree.

Stretching away alongside them, the smaller trees and shrubs represent all the people whose lives Bernard and Mary have touched.

the ineluctable modality of easter eggs

Afternoon bright and cold.
Ran into the beautiful chermop on Kilcullen Main Street.
"How many Easter eggs did you have?" she enquired brightly.
She was wrapped up like a snowman.
It must be noted that the habilements of the snowman could not quite conceal her striking femininity.
I eyed her keenly.
Her cheeks were suffused with winterish luminescence.
(Winterishly luminescent cheeks. Ooh er Missus. - Frankie Howerd note.)
I took all this in before I answered.
I reckoned she'd been asking a trick question.
In these circumstances it doesn't do to blurt out the first thing that comes into your head.
If I wasn't careful I might end up telling her the truth.
"I have eaten a grand total of nought Easter eggs," I proclaimed grandly. "As you well know I am a sufferer of gout. Therefore chocolate is not good for me. Easter eggs are off the menu."
The beautiful chermop gave me a probing sidelong glance.
"I'd say you had about three," she concluded after a minute.
I watched her stride away.
Damn chermopodists.
They can peer into the very soul.

easter

Donald Enright who has been active promoting devotion to the Italian Saint Padre Pio in Ireland, is one of the people quoted in a new book on that saint.
He says that in 1975 he was at a midnight mass in San Giovanni Rotondo, which was concelebrated by approximately 33 priests.
He says he saw Padre Pio walk onto the altar at midnight with the priests.
Padre Pio had died in the late 1960's.
Donald Enright says that from his pew he saw stars shining at the back of the altar area.
He says he saw a look of anguish on Padre Pio's face.
He says that at the culmination of the mass he saw the son of the Hebrew God on his cross on the altar.
He says he saw the two crucified criminals to the right and left of him.
He says one criminal was shrouded in a kind of darkness.
He says the other criminal was visibly touched by rays of light coming from the central crucified figure.
As the priests were giving out communion (wafers of bread which Catholic teaching maintains truly become the body of Christ), Donald Enright says Padre Pio stepped down from the altar and approached him in his pew.
As the ceremony ended Donald Enright says he saw Padre Pio leave the altar with the other priests.

Several possibilities should be considered:

1. Donald Enright is lying.

2. Donald Enright had a waking dream.

3. A corrupt element within the Capuchin order drugged Donald Enright to induce a waking dream.

4. Donald Enright saw what he described, representing a truth which all of us may know but which someone with my sins may not describe to you gentle travellers of the internet. A truth for which you yourselves must seek. Not among the dead. But the living.