fantome

rose scent night takes the house
i sit in the front room
the world was made for the shroud
i am alone
but being alone know not peace
nor loneliness if such you call
for tonight is a night of ghosts
familial phantoms fill the hall
peter hayes with an outsize pig
best of breed at the county fair
middle of summer 1896
great great grandfather
john healy pale and gaunt
staring down a charging horse
bringing the wayward animal to a halt
fifty years before my birth
granny berney of the floury hands
mixing up chicken slops
here's tuppence for being good
now run down to the shops
all night i've sat with the ghosts
while time and tide flowed soft
knowing not where i'll go
whence i came is good enough

russia withdraws from abheelzia

I tried to fight it.
A month ago I'd deleted her number from my phone.
I'd deleted her email address from my computer.
This was so I wouldn't keep ringing her and writing to her, trying to find out what in tarnation was wrong.
Back in September for some unknown reason she'd suddenly cut off all contact with me.
Maybe she'd found The Heelers Diaries while surfing the net and figured out who Marriedski was.
Or maybe she'd taken exception to my lighthearted comic criticisms of the Russian invasion of the sovereign State of Georgia.
I wondered.
We'd been through a lot ould Marriedski and me over the years.
In all modesty I gotta say it gentle travellers of the blogosphere. I am a likeable fellow. It is hard to believe that anyone who has ever entertained even a brief fondness for me, could so abruptly really truly seriously want to dismiss me from their lives.
There had to be a more rational explanation, ie one that didn't involve a genuine desire to cut me off.
She must have lost her job.
Or come down with a fatal illness.
Or maybe Aliens were controlling her mind.
Or something.
Today I could take it no more.
I had to know.
I went to her place of work.
Yup.
One step away from stalking her.
(Actually Heelers that is stalking her. - Ed note)
She was in the customer service area of the shoe shop at Arnotts when I walked in.
She moved into the rear area out of public view.
I walked back outside.
She definitely saw me.
If she saw me and didn't wave, that means she doesn't want to know me.
That's her prerogative, as me and Bobby Brown always used to say.
I headed down O'Connell Street.
Case closed.
A clean break.
Ain't never going to see her no more.
I can live with it.
Twenty minutes later I was back in Arnotts.
No sign of her.
I walked outside again.
Okay that was twice.
Twice at her place of work.
Twice really was close to stalking.
(Close Heelers? Ha, ha, ha. - Ed note)
I took a stroll up Abbey Street.
Calmer at last.
In the cold night air I could now think coherently.
I had no romantic designs on this woman.
Why torture myself by going back a third time?
What's to gain?
If I went back, she could not possibly say anything to me that I want to hear.
Going back again would be an absolute exercise in futility.
I might as well flagellate myself.
I heaved a sigh of relief.
Five minutes later I was back in Arnotts.
She was there.
I said: "Tania."
She moved away as if she hadn't heard.
I walked quickly towards her.
No hand on the arm.
Not trying to be intimidatory.
Or dramatic.
Or stupid.
I said softly but loud enough to hear: "Tania."
She turned.
She smiled and went to hug me.
I shook my head with what I intended to be an open almost apologetic expression.
There would be no hug.
I spoke gently, looking her directly in the eye.
"Tania, are you angry with me?"
For a moment she paused.
Then she said: "No, no, I'm not angry with you."
I said: "Is there anything you want to say to me?"
She looked sheepish.
Her eyes fell.
But I wasn't trying to stare her down.
She looked at me again, reassured by my manner and by my expression and by who I am.
"No," she said. "There's nothing I want to say."
She was sylph like, golden haired, glorious.
All in black.
I wanted to shout: "Now, you've nothing to say to me. Now? When you look like this. Ay yi yi."
The old eye contact was going on a bit.
I thought of saying:
"Why on earth would we let something so trivial as the War On Terror or the fate of nations come between us?"
But it wasn't the time or place for Heelers knockabout.
I let her look into my eyes long enough to see whatever was there.
"Okay," I said.
And left for the last time.

Tonight the garden at the chateau is full of winter wind.
I'm in the front room remembering Marriedski.
Our first meeting in the library when I walked up to her asking for Russian lessons.
(That old gag. - Ed note)
The charming incomprehensible Russian lessons that followed.
The day when she mentioned her husband ten times in the space of one sentence in order to let me know she had a husband.
The afternoon during an April shower when she prevailed upon me to write her essays for Film School.
The time she brought her daughter to meet me and the waitresses thought we were a family.
The evening when she told me her marriage was in trouble and I answered faster than was strictly speaking decent: "Everybody's marriage is in trouble. You will sort it out."
The coffees.
The pleasant carefree disagreements we had about President Putin's murder of the dissident in London, his murder of the politician in the Caucasus, his assassination attempt on President Levtushenko of Ukraine, and his ongoing attempts to resovietise Russia.
The Christmas present she gave me of a traditional handpainted Russian mug which I discovered had an 80 pence sticker on the bottom of it.
The day she told me one of her dreams and I interpreted it...

All of those memories are with me.
Of course from the mystical point of view, it is not improbable that our parting of the ways was intended by heaven.
A no-fault end to the friendship.
God just might have been saying: "Heelers you have no business being friends with a married woman this gorgeous."
In which case, the creator of the universe would be quite right.

But just for a few moments more tonight, with the wind rifling the trees outside my window in the garden of my father, I think I'll let the memories flow.

CNN's reportage of World War Two

The following is a genuine CNN news report circa September 1944... Tonight American and British planes killed thousands of innocent German civilians in a single murderous airstrike. Up to 100,000 men, women and children were wiped out in a devastating shock and awe style rain of destruction upon the city of Dresden. Already concerned voices are being raised on the homefront about a possible gung ho shoot to kill policy by Allied airmen against the Nazis. "They are shooting first and asking questions later," asserted Professor Noam Chomsky, sorry I mean Professor Erwin Rommel. "The Allied armies are completely out of control. What the hell are they trying to do? Win?" Peace protestor Cindy Sheahan, sorry I mean Tokyo Rose, is referring to the bombing as the single greatest atrocity of the war. Broadcaster Michael Moore, I mean Lord Haw Haw, claimed the combined American British actions amounted to genocide. Sources say the bombing of Dresden was totally unprovoked. According to an unnamed Nazi policeman who was not authorised to comment to CNN, the city was a peaceful city, just sitting there, not looking for trouble from anyone. A tearful Nazi Reichsmarchall Heinrich Himmler told CNN that he wanted a UN investigation into the American killing of civilians all over Nazi Germany. Meanwhile Amnesty International has accused the Americans of once more committing war crimes. Spokesperson for Amnesty International, Magda Goebbels said the Americans were now compounding their earlier crimes. "They attacked Italy which wasn't even involved in Nine Eleven, sorry I mean the invasion of Poland," a tearful Magda alleged. "Now they're attacking Nazi Germany and there seems to be no end in sight after five years." CNN polls show that the popularity of Winston Churchill is at an all time low. Public support for World War Two fell dramatically after the Nine Eleven Commission, sorry The Poland Commission, took a series of cheap shots at the President, sorry the Prime Minister, while concealing the culpability of Bill Clinton's totally groovy Administration which had incubated Al Qaeda for years. Sorry, Neville Chamberlain's totally groovy Administration which had incubated the Nazis for years. "President Roosevelt took us to war against Imperial Japan and fascist Italy when we all knew those countries had absolutely no links to Hitler's Nazi Germany," charged Senator Barack Obama. "We should impeach President Roosevelt. We should also impeach those members of the Administration who suggested that my middle name is Heinrich and that this name implies I have a German background. In fact my middle name is Hussein and this name implies I am a Muslim." Mounting criticism of President Roosevelt's War On Nazis has come from civil rights groups such as the Geheime Staats Polizei (Gestapo) and the Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers) whose members have condemned both Britain and America for detaining German nationals on their territories without trial. "In zair own countries zey are rounding up ze Muslim Terror spy networks, I mean ze German spy networks, I mean ze German citizens," said Fritz Graff Von Tortureberg of the Gestapo. "Zis iss an outrage. Zey must close Guantanamo Bay. It iss ein crime against humanity. Vee vill destroy you all. Nyah ha ha Gee Force. Allah U Akbar. I mean Sieg Heil." Unrest within the Allied forces themselves is also becoming apparent. A turncoat British officer told CNN that he doesn't think the Nazis can ever be beaten. "You can't beat an insurgency," Brigadier Traitor said. "We might as well give in to our Muslim overlords. Sorry, Nazi overlords." His words were echoed by London editor Max Hastings who has published several unreadable war books on the strength of his editorship of a pissant little unreadable newspaper rag that no one reads. "We must surrender at once," said Max Hastings. "Plush bottomed bast--ds like me are determined to trahaise the greatness of Britain. I opposed the American actions in Afghanistan from the beginning. Now we must snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We must negotiate with the Taliban and Al Qaeda before the Americans find another General Petraeus and obtain complete victory on all fronts. I'm not having that. Victory in Afghanistan and Iraq. The very idea is unconscionable. Why it would mean clowns like me and Robert Fisk were wrong about everything." In France, the Vichy government has declared that it now wants to open talks with the Nazi party. "We are in talks with the Taliban but of course we won't talk to Al Qaeda," remarked French Prime Minister Jean Marie Petain Du Surrender Totale. "I mean we are in talks with the Nazis but of course we won't talk to the SS. We draw the line at actually talking to Al Qaeda. We'll just be talking to the Taliban. They're not so bad. Sorry. I meant to say, oh I don't know. Where was I? Oh yes. Okay, let me be quite clear. As long as Al Qaeda members say they're members of the Taliban and not Al Qaeda members, we'll talk to them. And we'll talk to Hitler. He's not so bad. But we won't talk to er, someone else. Martin Bormann I suppose. Yes that's what I meant. Sacre bleu." Clearly this unwinnable war could last for decades. Not since Osama Bin Laden looked out the window at Torah Borah, saw the American army rolling up to the door, and issued his now famous order of unconquerable Islamic defiance, to wit "RUN AWAY," not since then has the peaceloving Muslim insurgency looked so close to all out victory. If only those evil British and Americans would just read the script, I mean the CNN version of the news, and surrender.

joining up the dots

Yesterday Tuesday 7th October 2008, at 4.45am Irish Time, (1.45pm Australian Time), a Qantas jet plane with 300 passengers on board made a forced landing in Western Australia.
Reports say 40 of the passengers suffered broken bones, lacerations and other injuries.
No one was killed.
On Tuesday 7th October at 4.50am Irish Time, (five minutes after the forced landing incident in Western Australia) someone in the Philippines logged on to The Heelers Diaries.
The visit was recorded on the statistics monitor (stat counter) which you may access at the bottom of this page by clicking on the appropriate icon.
The visitor from the Philippines logged on to an article I published here on Wednesday 6th August 2008.
The article concerned the forced landings of three other Qantas planes and speculated that Al Qaeda had infiltrated airline maintenance facilities with a view to committing more mass murders in the free world.
I wonder who in the Philippines was visiting the Heelers Diaries to read an old article about downed Qantas airliners, just five minutes after another Qantas plane went down.

Since I published the August article Qantas has grounded six other planes due to what airline spokespersons called "maintenance issues."
Investigators dealing with yesterday's downing of a Qantas plane have already announced that the plane's flight computer showed unexplained anomalous readings.

This morning Wednesday 8th October at 5.30am approx, I was sitting in the front room at the Chateau de Healy.
I had just decided to write something about the latest downed Qantas plane.
I stood up.
A framed photograph of my mother and father crashed from a shelf to the ground.
This seemed quite strange.
Calmly I fetched an image of the Divine Mercy (Jesus with red and blue light coming from his heart) and prayed in front of it.
I said: "God I don't care if it's an evil spirit, or my own mental derangement, or just a photo falling down off the shelf. You are all that I care about. I wish to know if my writing about Muslim terrorism is wrong. Am I contributing to hatred or racism or evil? I do not wish to offend you or to add to the sum total of evil in the world."
Then I prayed a decade of the rosary.
Then I wrote what you are reading now.

today they said

Barack Obama: "President Bush sent us to war against a country that had no links to Nine Eleven."

James Healy: "Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a hosting ground for Ansar Al Islam, a group that is part of Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in direct communication with Abu Musab Al Zarqawi a senior Al Qaeda agent. Saddam Hussein's Iraq hosted meetings with Mohammed Atta who was leader of the team of Muslim murderers who committed the Nine Eleven atrocity. These are the direct links to Al Qaeda that are in the public domain. There are others. Barack Obama really wants to be President of the United States. He wants it so bad he's willing to sell out the United States to the Jihadi's in order to discredit President Bush."

near dark

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.

A BIT IRISH (by Medbh Gillard)

Clothesline at the Chateau de Healy...

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."