dawn becomes a budgie

It is morning at the chateau.

The budgies are chattering for their croissants.

I'm sitting in the kitchen with the Mammy quaffing coffees.

"What are you going to call them?" asks the aged parent.

"I was thinking of Onan and Potiphar," sez me.

"You can't do that," asserts the Mammy.

"Why not?" interrogatives I.

"Because your nephews will want to know where you got the names," expostulateth she.

I grin above the din.

"Then I'll just tell them the truth," I insist, " which is that when their granny was young, a priest called to the house and asked what her canary's name was. And your granny said: Onan, because he keeps spilling his seed."

The lady known as Lil favours me with a severe look.

"Ah you wouldn't," quoth she.

"I think I would," sez me.

"Then I'll start calling you Onan Na Nein," threateneth she.

This is an interesting twist.

Vintage Lillism, you might say.

Onan Na Nein is Irish for Onan Of The Birds.

It's a pun on the title of a Padraic Pearse short story called Eoghaneen Na Nein, or Little John Of The Birds.

As nicknames go, it lacks something in the sort of grandeur I have come to expect in my monickers.

I mean, it's a bit of a comedown after Dracula, Yakkie, Smiler, The Dasher, The Jumpen, Batman, Tasmanian Devil, and Heeler The Peeler.

Also, due to a small fallng out with Padraic Pearse in my youth over the use of violence as a means to an end, I have no wish to be nicknamed after any character in one of his short stories.

"I'll call the budgies Green and Blue," I tell her dourly.

The Mammy's laugh is positively triumphal.