The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

the vanishing

Mid afternoon coffee with my cousin Yankee Joe.
He is a native of Boston exiled by fate for the winter in Ireland.
We are posited at the window table of the Chat And Chew.
Outside as per usual a light October sun is dancing on Main Street.
School children skirmish on the path.
Ah life.
You bauble.
Come to me.
"What do you think of Sarah Palin?" enquireth the cousin.
I paused meditatively in mid quaff.
I like being asked my opinions and it happens less often than you might think. So I wanted to savour the moment.
"I think I want her to win," I replied eventually with an air of great erudition. "I've bet money on her and McCainers."
"Ah Heelers you always go for the Republicans."
"And you guys in Massachusetts always go for the Dems."
"Okay, but what do you really think of Palin?"
"The answer to your question is she's a bit of a gusher. But I like her."
The cousin digested this.
"How do you think she did against Joe Biden in the Vice Presidential debate?"
"Well Biden is very slick and he's cool under pressure. Neither Sarah nor McCain are in his league when it comes to the talking stakes. She did okay. Much better than when she was ambushed by that ABC idiot Charles Gibson asking her what she thought of the Bush Doctrine and then refusing to tell her what the hell he was talking about. Every journalist worth his salt knows there is no clearly defined Bush Doctrine. There are at least four instant possible definitions. But the term is not used in common parlance. It has no precise meaning. Gibson is a lying coward and he's a worse coward because he's trying to get Barack elected and pretends he isn't. That's all. It was a total set up. And then that Democratic party shill Katie Couric, holder of the Connie Chung Award for Journalistic Integrity, asking Sarah to itemise McCain's voting record over the past forty years. Sure, McCain himself wouldn't be able to do that. It was all a load of baloney. Partisanship from the supposedly objective unbiased media hacks. The great gotcha questions from these apparatchiks of the Barack campaign. They might just as well have asked: Why don't you love Barack the way we do... A few cheap shots. The best they could come up with. Still Sarah was flustered alright. It was different against Joe Biden. She gave as good as she got even if Senator Biden's a better communicator by a country mile."
Yankee Joe yawned.
"No surprises there," quoth he. "I could have predicted you'd say all that."
I wasn't finished.
"Really Cousin, the nub of the problem for Sarah and McCain is that neither of them can make a speech to save their lives," I insisted. "And they're up against two politicians who are indubitably superb in that regard. In fact Barack is probably the best talker on the planet earth. He could say: I need to go to the toilet. And it would sound presidential. Barack is the Mike Tyson of talking. You know, I'd put him in charge of the College debating team in a second. I just wouldn't put him in charge of the free world."
"But you're not an objective judge."
"True," I admitted.
"You even liked Bush."
I looked at him seriously.
"I still like President Bush," I said. "I think he's been a truly great President. He's ended the Saddam Hussein family murderocracy in Iraq and he's ended the Arab terror dictatorship in Afghanistan."
(Heelers believes the Arabs were running the Taliban regime - Ed note.)
Yankee Joe spluttered into his coffee mug.
"You can't be serious."
"Cousin, I'm absolutely serious. I'm Yahoo Serious. No other President would have stood strong after Nine Eleven. The pressure was on to talk a big fight and then do nothing. The useless media groups of the western world were all set to cry a few crocadile tears and then go back to business as usual. CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Time magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Compost. Utterly worthless quisling cold hearted swines. They'd have surrendered to the Muslim terrorists rather than end the clammy clubby consensus of Clinton era politics. But President Bush gave the Jihadi's the war they still can't believe. And history will thank him for it."
"You think the War On Terror will be won?"
"It will be won or we will be ruled by Arabs. There's no in between. President Bush played his part. Now it falls to our generation to decide whether we want freedom or whether we're willing to accept the imposition of a dysfunctional ideology posing as a religion that has no respect for women, children, science, freedom, culture, history or humanity in general."
(For any employees of CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Seyss Inquart, The Washington Feldwebel, the BB communist C, Channel Four, the Irish Times, Le Monde Esclavé, and the Nazi Channel Al Jazeera, you should know that the religion Heelers is referring to is the peaceloving religion of Islam, and not any of the genuinely peaceloving religions which you heroes of free speech are so accustomed to sneering at. - Ed note)
Yankee Joe eyed me with a certain disdain.
"How do you think President Bush has done on the economy?" sez he.
I grinned and shrugged and held up my hands in surrender.
"You got me. Right in the gizzard. It's the one serious problem that afflicts conservative parties or parties of principle everywhere. Big money bast--ds infiltrate us in order to make us their farm animals. In order to manipulate the political process and foster the illusion that without the banks or the stock exchange or the financial institutions, our democracies and our freedoms couldn't exist. It's a lie of course. Okay. The financial crisis is the perfect storm in Barack's favour. I don't deny it. And I'll admit something else. When I consider the corruption of stock exchanges and banks and financial institutions worldwide, I find that I have more in common with the Democrats and European left wing parties on those mattters. Of course Europe has been run by socialists for forty years. Even our right wing parties are just socialists in drag. And socialists have corruptions of their own. After forty years of buying off the trade union movement in Ireland, the socialists have left us in the rather sad position of blaming America for our rundown, moth eaten, rust bucket economy. The Irish Fianna Fail government has handed out forty percent payrises across the public sector. Forty percent to invidiously idle nursies, to extortionist school teachers, to thuggish jailbird bus drivers, and worst of all to corrupt cops who actually phoned in sick en masse to get their pay demands. The same cops who have replaced the internationally accepted motto of policing To Protect And Serve, with a motto of their own To Harass And Intimidate. And we're wondering why our money is suddenly worth forty percent less. The Irish government guarantees to support the Bank Of Ireland which last year paid its head honcho four million quid. Four million quid for a year's work? Four million quid just to place the Bank Of Ireland in such a competitive trading position that without government support it will collapse? I gotta say I think the scruff is being seriously overpaid and I'm not a bit happy my government is using my money to keep his bank in the style to which it has become accustomed. The same government welched on paying me Unemployment Benefit. Yes, the Irish government Department of Social Welfare in the town of Newbridge welched on paying me the Unemployment Benefit money I was entitled to under the law. A couple of twenty something trade unionised hags with jobs for life at the Department of Social Welfare in Newbridge found a pretext and welched on paying me the two hundred quid a week I was due after having paid social insurance every week for a decade. And yet with scarcely a week's notice the same Irish government comes up with a hundred billion to save the banks. Useless corrupt bast--ds. But I digress. You got me with that question about the economy. I don't know what to say. I genuinely think Mr Bush is a great President and an honorable man. But on the economy you got me. The old analyses don't apply. In a way I think it's time for people of goodwill to get together and set up new political parties. Ones that won't allow banking scumbags to infiltrate. Ones that won't allow the trade union movement to crash the economy by extorting forty percent payrises. Ones that aren't ashamed to be Christian. And ones that will never surrender to Muslim terrorists. Yes my Paddy Whack countrymen all think it's somebody else's fault that the European economy is collapsing and that the Jihadi's are committing mass murder worldwide. In truth it's all our own fault. But thankfully there's a cure."
Yankee Joe stood up.
"Sorry I can't stay," sez he, "I have to talk to a man about a dog."
Whereupon he vanished.

Monday, October 06, 2008

A BIT IRISH (by Medbh Gillard)


Clothesline at the Chateau de Healy...

Sunday, October 05, 2008

apologia pro dumpings mea

Coffee with Doctor Barn in the Whitewater Centre.
It is indeed ironic folks that I give such unstinting support to a commercial entity named after a Bill Clinton scandal.
The Whitewater Centre.
I mean, how did they pick the name.
Is it just a typical piece of harmless Paddy Whackery?
After all my countrymen are nothing if not insane.
Ay yi yi, as we do say in the trade.
But whatever next?
The Monica Lewinski conference centre and hotel?
The Vince Foster memorial park and ride?
The Create A New Muslim Republic In Kosovo Where There Never Was One Before cineplex and highway overpass?
But I digress.
(Unfunnily too - Ed note.)
Back to the subject.
Doctor Barn and me are quaffing coffees you know where.
"I've been wondering," quoth he. "Some of those girls who pop up on your website. Are they all still around."
"Nope," sez I. "There's been a lot of seepage of late. In fact I've been dumped so many times in the past month I'm starting to feel punch drunk."
"Which of them dumped you?"
"Well Marriedski for a start."
"She was just your friend."
"The dumping still hurt just as much I can tell you."
"So why did she dump you?"
"I think she took it a bit to heart when I wrote on The Heelers Diaries that Russia suffered from a pissant peasant fetish for conquest, usurpation and impoverishment."
Doctor Barn laughed long and loud and hearty.
"Yeah," chortleth he. "Yeah it's just possible she didn't like that."
Presently he finished his merriment.
"Go on," sez he. "Who else dumped you?"
Clearly he wasn't treating the subject with the seriousness it deserved.
For a start he was pronouncing the word dumped with peculiar relish.
I answered him nonetheless.
"The Sicilian," sez I.
"Why?" sez he.
"She had a problem with me being 42," sez I.
"Ha, ha, ha," sez he again more delighted at my chagrin than strictly speaking a brother should be.
When he'd finished the necessary chuckling, he leaned forward.
"What about the Hindu babe?" enquireth he.
My pallor ashened.
A faraway look came into my eyes.
Not one of those happy far away looks either.
"The Hindu babe is wandering around a beach in Goa with a Pathan tribesman called Rudigore," I mused softly. "She lives now only in my memories."

Saturday, October 04, 2008

she who knows not fate

Rendezvous with Hoddlebun in the cafe above Easons bookshop on O'Connell Street.
Yes, she's back.
She's come back I tell you.
Back to Farancreesht.
Sorry.
Lost it there for a minute.
Outside our window the city of Dublin is resplendent in October sunshine.
"So," sez Hodders, "are you still collecting unemployment assistance?"
"Nah," sez I.
"Why not?"
"Well Hodders old bean it's certainly not because I'm working."
"What happened?"
"Some young one behind the counter at the Social Welfare office in Newbridge looked at me as if I was scum and I suddenly became a lot less interested in having any dealings with them."
"How long ago did that happen?"
"April."
Big Hair looked mildly distrait.
"So how are you surviving?"
I flashed her my famous fleeting grin.
"One day at a time, Hodders my old apple crumble, one day at a time."

Friday, October 03, 2008

the octobrists

dead relatives in a photograph
watch me from the wall
shell shocked at my decision
i sit and write alone
i might have loved you once
but i will never love you now

night is at my window
the years are at my door
and what was wrought in darkness
shines brightly all the more
and what will never be
has its own brief allure

a spirit restless brooding
in a body growing old
sifts the drifting embers
through the ashes of my soul
they say love lights the universe
but the universe is cold

Thursday, October 02, 2008

it is better to give than to take

Morning at the Chateau de Healy.
Ireland's greatest living poet comes breezing up the hall full of the joys of living.
I find my brother Padre Peter sitting in the kitchen surrounded by admiring family members.
He is on a flying visit home from his parish.
"Hey Pete," sez I. "Don't go anywhere. There's a book I want you to see."
I nip back to my room and fetch him my pristine hardback copy of the new Mother Angelica biography by Raymond Arroyo.
The book is my most precious possession at the moment.
It was first recommended to me by Robyn, a visitor to this website from Texas.
It's the true story of a nun who set up a television station.
A week ago, not very optimistically, I shelled out twenty quid for it thinking that it would be a worthy but dull read about vocational living.
Well folks.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Nuns have been very much misunderstood.
Mainly by me.
I'm telling you this thing reads like a thriller.
I've been coming home every evening looking forward to diving back into it.
Anyhoo.
I handed the book to Pete, said my farewells, and departed Dublinwards for a rendezvous with Awd Spanishy.
Awd Spanishy was in fine Spanish fettle.
Her and her castanets, and her flashing eyes, and her take-me-to-the-casbah.
She'd argue with her shadow too.
She'd argue with her shadow about... about light refraction I suppose.
Arf, arf.
She would though.
Ah, but she's a handsome gerrul.
(Heelers means she's tolerably good looking in a fiery Spanish loon sort of way. - Ed note)
I arrived back at the chateau late this evening, tired but happy, and looking forward to unwinding at the fireside with my Mother Angelica book.
A brief rummage did not find it.
I hurried into the kitchen.
"Where's my book?" I enquired of the aged parents.
The Mammy raised her eyebrows while the Dad pretended to be mixing up porridge for the squirrel.
There was an awkward silence.
"You gave it to Peter," said the Mammy finally.
"I gave it to him to look through," quoth I moderately aghast.
"He thought you were giving it to him for keeps," said the Mammy.
And somewhere, not too far away, the music from The Good The Bad And The Ugly went Aieeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

into the great wide open