great moments in sport

It was the dulcet Summer of 1976.
Me and my brother Barn were staying for a week's holiday at our friend Darragh Murphy's house in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght.
I was ten years old and the brother was eight.
The stay at Murphys was a bit of an adventure since we had moved to the country a few years earlier and our return for a visit was replete with unusual novelties and freedoms.
We didn't do much but everything we did seemed imbued with childhood magic.
At least it does in my memory.
This was the Summer when Mr Murphy, Darragh's Dad, oversaw our marathon five hour efforts to put up a tent on the front lawn.
When I say he oversaw us, I mean he sat on the front porch shouting encouragement.
He was from Cork and had a finely honed sense of the ridiculous.
I seemed to particularly inspire him to the heights of eloquence and wit.
As we struggled to erect the tent, I remember the stream of comments rising from the porch.
He delivered each remark in a ringing invectival Corkonian voice: "Jamie Healy! I hear about you building passenger aeroplanes, and rockets, and jet fighters, and you can't even put up a tent! Jamie Healy, what's all this about your space ships and your ray guns and your Tardis and your time tunnel! And you can't even put up a tent! Jamie Healy, aren't you the leader of the pack? The head of the gang. The guy who creates new animals by crossbreeding rabbits with hens. The one who causes all the mischief. And you can't even put up a tent."
You get the picture.
He was right too.
I couldn't even put up a tent.
Halcyon days indeed.
Thank heavens no one had told him about our helicopter that runs on water programme.
He'd have gotten great mileage out of that.
And I don't mean air miles.
Also resident in the house was Darragh's teenage sister Blathnaid.
Blathnaid is an Irish name meaning flower or flowery.
She wasn't quite as gorgeous as Juanita Kennedy who had lived next door to us before we left Tallaght, but she had a certain something.
Proximity.
By the way, Juanita was the daughter of a tough Glasgow woman and Mike Kennedy the famous Irish champion jockey.
Mrs Kennedy was tough in a no nonsense sort of way. When a few years earlier I had gotten into a scratch fight with her son Brian (even then I fought like a girl) she bided her time until I'd forgotten all about it and climbed into Kennedys' garden to retrieve a football. Instantly a window was flung open, and Mrs Kennedy who had been watching for the right moment, read me the riot act in stern Glaswegian.
The salient heart stopping phrase which lives with me to this day ran: "Did you scratch my Brian?"
What do you say to that?
I think I said no but she wasn't having it.
And there was nowhere to hide.
Interestingly enough the only time I ever actually ran away from home (planned to do so many times) was again before we had moved from Tallaght and again involved the Kennedys. Darragh Murphy and I had been swinging off the branches in a beautiful cypress tree in Kennedys's front garden and broken the shapeliest bough.
We fled north as far as Davy's sweet shop where my own Dad found us two hours later.
No words were spoken. He led us out to the car and drove us home.
Darragh and I couldn't believe it.
Had the Dad come into the sweet shop by chance?
Did everyone know we had ruined the Kennedys' cypress tree?
Did anyone know?
Did they actually not care?
We never found out.
But I digress.
Juanita Kennedy was something of a tomboy, ie she was the only person on the street to ever nearly beat my older brother Tom in a scratch fight.
But Juanita didn't look like a tomboy or like an average Tallaght girl either.
She looked like something out of heaven.
The name they had given her was Spanish.
If I remember rightly, on Main Street Tallaght, Juanita's name was pronounced One-Eee-Ther.
Rich Dublinese.
Crumbs she was a honey.
Juanita had looked unremarkable for much of our early childhood.
Then suddenly, boom.
Whoomph deh it is, as the young black rappers say nowadays.
When they blossom they blossom quick.
With her lustrously shining waist length brown hair, soulful brown eyes, lissom limbs, etc etc, she looked not like a creature of the earth and yet was on it, etc etc, et elle me faisait rever des choses inconnues etc etc.
Well you know what I mean.
She was gorgeous.
And unattainable.
Blathnaid was good looking though not nearly as gorgeous.
But Blathnaid was nearby.
That is to say, as per our previous, that as a member of the Murphy family she happened to be staying in the Murphy house where we were holidaying in this dulcet Summer of 1976.
And Blathnaid acted gorgeous.
With her big bouncy blonde hair and swirly skirts that looked like something out of our sister Marie's Jackie magazines.
Yes Blathnaid's name meant flower.
(Or flowery.)
And she seemed a very womanly sort of flower to our innocent eyes, if not quite in the One-Eee-Ther Kennedy league.
Her Dublin accent rendered her dangerously exotic in my febrile imagination.
She was the only one of the Murphy children to have the real city accent even though the rest of the family had also been raised in Dublin.
Barn and me had Oxbridge accents.
Even then.
And we'd been raised in Dublin too.
God had obviously already destined Doctor Barn for great things by giving him that accent and was apparently just having the crack with me.
Anyhoo.
Blathnaid's Dublin accent seemed tremendously different and wildly sensual to us.
Okay.
To me.
My voracious appetite for Enid Blyton books meant I already knew words like "sensual" and how they might be applied.
Also for the record, it was from Enid Blyton that I also knew lesser used meanings of words like "ejaculated," which the blessed Enid used rather quaintly to describe people speaking to each other.
When I think of the problems that woman caused me.
You've got to imagine me years later ejaculating to the ghost of Enid Blyton in a voice like the Spanish swordsman in The Princess Bride: "That word... I do not think it means what you think it means."
Ah, the lefties were right to ban her.
She was a sex maniac, was Enid Blyton.
In later life I had a further quarrel with her ghost about her use of the word "rather" which Enid's characters said as a single word exclamation to express enthusiasm.
Would you like a cup of tea?
Rather!
Irish kids would beat you up for saying that.
And they'd think they were doing you a favour.
It was ----ing madness.
But I digress.
Me and Barn were staying at the Murphys. Nothing much was happening. It was all fairly magical. Blathnaid made me hunger for things unknown.
That's the way things stood.
Barn and I had a room to ourselves with bunk beds.
One night I woke in the wee small hours.
The eight year old child who would later be Doctor Barn was returning to the room.
He looked a bit shook as he shut the door.
"Where were you?" sez the ten year old me.
"I was going to the toilet," replies he in a shaky voice.
"What's wrong with you?" sez me.
"When I was coming back I went into Blathnaid's room by mistake," quoth he.
I sat bolt upright in the bed.
"Yeah right, why would you do that?" sez I with Shakespearian incredulity.
"I was sleepy, I got mixed up," explains he.
"What happened?" sez I fascinated.
My little brother's pallor became positively tragic.
"I went to get into the bed," he managed. "As I pulled back the blanket, Blathnaid woke up, rolled over and just stared at me."
"Wow," sez I.
"Yes," he agreed bitterly.
"Did she say anything?" I enquired after a pause to digest.
"She said: Bairrnaird Healy, where do you think you're goin!" groaned he disconsolately.
The upper bunk shook as I began to laugh.
It was five minutes before I regained control.
(Forty years actually and counting- ed note)
"And you really expect me to believe you went in there by accident?" I ventured.
"Of course it was an accident," exploded Barn with pretty good venom for an eight year old.
I required a renewed laughter intermission which took another five minutes.
When it ended, I stared at Barn.
He stared back.
In that moment he seemed to have a premonition.
He seemed to see years and years of me laughing and making jokes about this very night.
"You're not going to keep going on about this?" he asked poignantly.
"Don't worry," I reassured him. "I'll never mention it again."

seeing

padre peter

the son of the hebrew god has called your name
and you in truth would answer him
he's promised you not wealth or fame
but a life of hardship
and a death alone

fool
have you not seen in the years that are unbound
useless blood shed uselessly
children barracking their teachers
scoundrels in their minstrelsy

and do you not know
the people hate their priests
they'll hate you also
the son of the hebrew god has called your name
brother
tell him no

great moments in sport

The Mammy at breakfast musing aloud.
"I can't believe your cousin Rowena married that guy," quoth she.
"Ah he's alright," sez I.
"I never liked him," quoth she.
"What have you got against him?" sez I.
"I don't know, just a feeling of general loathing," quoth she.
"Ah Mam, that's a bit harsh," sez I.
The Mammy sighed as her mind sifted through the memories.
She spoke now as if from far away.
"I still remember the first time I saw him," she murmured. "He was staring into a pint of beer as if he was watching television. I thought it was a bad sign."
This comment by the aged parent amused me mightily.
It had that quality of pith I look for in a comment.
A gentle mellifluity enwrought with the pure sweet cadences of truth.
It's affect on me was so profound that for long long moments I had to desist from slipping MC Hamster cheese slices, I was laughing so hard.
"Ah Liller," sez I finally wiping my eyes. "Fine turn of phrase there. It's a classic. Staring into a pint as if he was watching television. James Joyce would be proud of that one. I gotta tell you, old mother old pal, sometimes your most casual remarks make life worth living."

a rooskie in dublin

TV or not TV - that is the question!

By Irina Kuksova

****************

They say people watch too much telly these days. I don't know about you but I'm not into it myself. A quick psychological analysis shows there was a lot of "TV is bad for you" propaganda during my formative years. Even television presenters themselves seemed to support that view, a fact which cannot have helped their careers. Since then, to my mind, regular TV watching has seemed like a very bad habit. On the same level as smoking. Both shorten lives considerably. Both are utterly boring. Both make me want to leave the room.

My Irish friends maintain that my aversion to television stems from the fact that in communist Russia the television watches you. A little Soviet era joke there. The Irish love the old jokes. They are, how do you say it, suckers for the classics. Twenty years after the fall of communism, and it might as well be yesterday as far as the Irish are concerned. Or tomorrow.

Of course there are ways of making TV more useful by carefully selecting what you watch. Still there are pitfalls. For instance, you might be lured by the science fiction posing as reality on the Discovery Channel. My point is, if you are really interested in something or some place, why not go out and experience it first hand. Don't just watch the Discovery Channel in order to feel intellectually superior to those who watch Fair City. (An Irish soap opera.)

Okay, having real experiences and visiting exotic foreign locations is a lot more expensive than sitting at home watching them on the box. But there are safe and well rewarded ways of getting real life experiences closer to home.

I know someone who's recently started working as a foreign language interpreter for the Irish police force. She's learnt more about hospitals in a few short weeks than from ten years of watching ER. She's been entertained by real life cases no less absurd than those which make up the daily diet on Judge Judy.

Not a bad idea is it? You'd be helping people and getting recognition. When interpreting, you'd be touched not by a talented or talentless actor but by a real person living a real life.

Yes, all this will be possible only if you've got enough free time to learn a language. Now switch off the TV and you'll have lots of free time...

The Photographer's Eye (with Enrica Cecchini)

nearer my god to thee...
**********************

How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. Good news! I took this photo in the Gran Paradiso national park in Italy. I aways feel close to heaven when I am there. Enrica

byrne's reverie

in the woods there's a woman
autumn leaves in her hair
a strange ornament upon her wrist
the wind kissed
her skin
he could not tell
did garment end
and flesh begin
her eyes unwrept his secrets
and her lips bid
care not for waking
men will make and break as always
without you
i am alone
the wind kisses my skin
i need you

an irish lad
asleep beneath a tree
was tempted so
and told the tale to me

when the great and good depart

Nuala Fennell is dead.
Irish newspapers are full of adulatory epithets about what a great woman she was.
I will not add to their hypocrisy.
Here is the news.
Nuala Fennell was an Irish atheist feminist politician who throughout her life championed abortion culture, condom culture, contraceptive pill culture, and all the other Godless appurtenances of the permissive society.
All her life she despised the Catholic church.
I will instance the following.
It has not been mentioned in any of the slavish fiction pieces currently being passed off in the national media as tributes to Nuala Fennell.
Back in the 1980's a young teenage girl called Ann Lovett died in the open air while giving birth.
Ann Lovett had become pregnant, kept her pregnancy secret, and apparently attempted to give birth alone.
At the time the Irish broadcaster RTE, along with Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times attempted to hijack Ann Lovett's death as an indictment of Catholicism.
Nuala Fennell was to the fore in this attempt.
The malignancy of Nuala Fennell's attempt to hijack Ann Lovett's death as part of a feminist propaganda campaign against the Catholic church was as blatent as it was obscene.
The airwaves hummed with falsehoods.
People like Nuala Fennell who had never known Ann Lovett used her to justify their own bereft abortionist contraceptivist ideology.
Amid all the sneering lies falsely blaming the Catholic church for Ann Lovett's death, only one momentary ray of truth broke through.
A teenage friend of Ann Lovett's was asked on RTE radio what she thought of Nuala Fennell.
RTE was sure the teenage friend of Ann Lovett's would give her approval for Nuala Fennell's attempts to manipulate Ann Lovett's death for anti Catholic propaganda.
But Ann Lovett's teenage friend was made of sterner stuff.
Nobody was expecting what came next.
"Nuala Fennell is a silly bitch," she answered.
Her words were broadcast nationwide on the morning news programme.
In subsequent broadcasts RTE edited out the comment.
To this day it is the only true utterance about Nuala Fennell that has ever been broadcast in the Republic of Ireland.
Yes Nuala Fennell is dead.
Like all Dublin atheists of a particularly plush bottomed social millieu, she has sought the rites of the Catholic church for her funeral.
The funeral will take place on Friday in Dalkey's Church of the Plush Bottomed Atheists.
I wonder will any of the officiating priest have the courage to mention Nuala Fennell's life long detestation of the Catholic church.
I wonder will any of the officiating priests have the courage to mention Ann Lovett.
I wonder will any of the officiating priests have the courage to mention Ann Lovett's brave insightful honorable friend.
For me that friend has created the only true epitaph for Nuala Fennell and her miserable misspent atheist abortionist contraceptivist life.
I say it again.
Nuala Fennell was a silly bitch.


**************************

The following was received by email in response to the above.

Forwarded Message.
Date: 2012.
From: Brian Fennell.
To: James Healy.
Subject: Truth and Honesty.

Dear James Healy
Only just last week I came across your reference to my late wife Nuala Fennell in your "Heelers Diaries" reference to Nuala's death dated 13th August 2009.
You are entitled to your opinions but you should base them on the truth.
You describe Nuala as an atheist, in this you were wrong, as in other matters.
She was a devout Catholic, a weekly communicant.
Yes she advocated the liberalisation of availability of contraception,
Yes she favoured the introduction of divorce,
Yes she campaigned for equality for women.
Yes she was instrumental in setting up the first refuge in Ireland for Women and children who were subject to violence in the home.
NO she never campaigned for or in any way worked for or advocated the introduction of abortion ,never ever.
I was married to Nuala for over 50 years ,she was a very sincere and honest woman who was not in any way anti Catholic ,the "Fathers" of the Irish Church have done it more damage than anybody else could have done by their arrogance and cover ups over the years.
I wish you well.
Brian Fennell

extraordinary renditions you won't read about in the irish times

Ireland is now the third most popular destination for children kidnapped by Muslims in the United Kingdom.
In the past year authorities believe at least twenty children abducted by their Muslim fathers or uncles have been brought to Ireland.
That's twenty we know about.
The real figure will be far higher.
The main culprits in this sort of criminality are Pakistanis who have married and then divorced British women.
In cases where the courts award custody of children to their British mothers, the fathers will often attempt a kidnapping.
The authorities are aware of at least 300 such Muslim kidnappings of children in the past year.
And at least twenty of the kids ended up in Ireland.
Usually our clownish atheistic Jihadi loving newspapers use the term "extraordinary renditions" to refer to CIA interception, transport, detention and incarceration of Muslim terrorists.
The term and the opprobrium the liberals associate with it, could be more appropriately used for the kidnapping of these children by Muslims who think they own them.
Extraordinary renditions indeed.
Why are children kidnapped by Muslim Pakistanis being brought to Ireland?
Ireland is the main forward operating base for Al Qaeda in Europe.
The country is used for scouting and teaser missions into the United Kingdom and the USA.
A teaser mission is when Arab or Pakistani Muslims speak loudly in Arabic on a plane or train in order to test the security response and frighten legitimate passengers.
Since Muslim terrorists regard Ireland as a safe haven for Al Qaeda, it is a safe bet that Muslims kidnapping their own children from their mothers have also concluded it is a safe haven for this activity as well.
Surely this is a news story of great importantance.
Muslim thugs kidnapping twenty children and imprisoning them in Ireland prior to shipping them back to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for indoctrination.
Imprisoning them in Ireland.
Or killing them here.
We don't know which because the extraordinary renditions of children into Ireland by Pakistani Muslims are not being investigated by the police or reported by the media.
Yeah folks.
These are the extraordinary renditions you won't be reading about in the Irish Times any time soon.
The Irish Times and its appeaserish incompetent equivalents in Britain, are too busy trying to criminalise the Americans for lifting terrorists off the streets to focus on real criminality.
Too busy worrying about the supposed rights of Al Qaeda murderers in Guantanamo Bay, to worry about the real human rights of these children who having begun life in Britain are now to be condemned to a nightmare existence amid the psycho culture of Daddy's Little Islam.
Too busy trying to give Al Qaeda a get out of jail free card, to spare even a few column inches for these children who are in an Islamic jail which accords them no rights, no privileges, no lawyers, no dignity, and no freedom.
I think we should put a stop to this.

nostalgia ain't what it used to be arf arf

During the 1970's, our lives were brightened in the small town of Kilcullen by a plethora of weekly comic books arriving from England.
These lurid publications featured the most outrageously violent nay bloodsoaked depictions of World War Two.
No doubt children all over Ireland and Britain were similarly delighted with the cheery depictions of mayhem and massacre which so thrilled us and which made up the magnificently visceral thoroughly objectionable literary corpus of the Victor, Hurricane, Battle, and Warlord comics
Endlessly recycling simple plotlines, the stories featured a German army crippled by the fact that its soldiers appeared to have been constructed out of pure gelignite.
One can imagine restaurateurs in occupied France appealing to their clientele each evening: "If there are any Germans in the house, would you please go outside to explode."
On looking back at these halcyonic representations of a global conflict where the forces of good actually decided not to surrender to the Jihadis or put their own Prime Minister and President on trial, I am particularly struck by the various comic book authors' depictions of German soldiers in extremis.
Whenever the Nazis got shot or blown up, they would nearly always manage to exclaim something.
Usually something in German.
And these valedictory exclamations in death were the only words of German most of us ever encountered in our childhood.
To this day, if I ever get blown up in Germany, I won't have to worry about coming up with a good exit line.
Ordering lunch though would be a problem.
In the course of a year as children we would view the deaths of thousands of Nazis in the various comics.
The Germans in them all seemed to draw on a similar well of inspiration when shuffling off the mortal coil.
There were a few stock phrases which they used.
We didn't understand these poignant words but there was no doubt in our minds that they brought the stories to the ultimate heights of elevated drama.
I cannot envision Germans dying any other way.
So here it is.
For all you who've been waiting...

Top Ten Last Words For German Soldiers In World War Two Comics

1. "Was ist das?" It means: "What's this?" Favoured by U Boat commanders who have just discovered an explosive device left in their bunk bed by Lord Peter Flint.

2. "Himmel." It means: "Heaven." The all purpose shout for a company of krauts who've wandered in front of Union Jack Jackson's machine gun nest.

3. "Gott in himmel." Favoured by more religious Germans while being machine gunned by Union Jack Jackson.

4. "Mein Gott." Frank expression of admiration by dying Nazis at the ingeniousness of a British ambush.

5. "Achtung, schnell, aieeeeee." It means: "Look out, hurry, this really hurts." The preferred phrase of truck drivers who've spotted a British mine placed by Charlie Wilson in the road but haven't had enough time to avoid it.

6. "Teufel." It means: "Devil." Really angry Germans would say this if they got caught in a cross fire or wandered into a mine field. In Kilcullen we all presumed it was pronounced "Chuffel." In what passes for my adult life, some kindly Germans (thanks Andrea) have informed me that they say it more like "toy-full." No. It's just not the same.

7. "Donner Und Blitzen." This one strains credulity. Are we to believe that Germans who've sustained mortal wounds in a flame thrower sweep really intone the names of Santa Claus' reindeer? Surely Warlord was indulging in a flight of fancy with this one.

8. "Nein." Apparently a comment on the unfairness of it all or a last polite rejection of the whole notion that Germany could ever lose this war to such gentlemanly opponents. It means: "no."

9. "Verdammte Britisher schwein." It means: "Damned British pig." Less polite Germans furious at dying beneath the wheels of a Sherman tank would come out with this one.

10. "Arghhh." The most popular all purpose exit line among Nazi soldiers on both the Western and the Eastern Front and indeed in every theatre (and comic book) of the war. Particularly popular with the Afrika Korps in Egypt. Also borrowed for copious use by the Imperial Japanese. One of the great disappointments of my life has been discovering that "arghhh" is not German at all.

our television listings

RTE1
(The Irish national fraudcaster, a television station of the liberal atheists by the liberal atheists for the liberal atheists, but financed by believing Christians through government imposed compulsory taxation.)
1.15 Neighbours. Never watched it. No idea what it's about.
1.40 To Buy Or Not To Buy. Never watched it.
2.15 Eastenders. See above.
2.55 The Restaurant. Ditto.
3.25 Grand Designs. And again.
4.25 Murder She Wrote. Jessica infiltrates Al Qaeda and finds a world wide Islamic murder army ready to enslave the free world.
5.20 The Bill. Special day long episode. Miffley thinks he's got Bates bang up to rights for the drug heist. Jenkins is sued by a toe rag gang leader for failing to use enough cliches while making an arrest. Ronson is in trouble with Carter over the new paint job in the office. Bozo gets thrown off the force for having a stupid name. And Wilkins gets transferred from Sun Hill to Hill Street Blues which is actually a vaguely watchable cop show. Guest appearance by Dickson Of Dock Green.
5.45 Nuacht. Here's a hankie.
6.00 The Angelus. The only programme with even a vaguely Christian resonance on RTE. It features exactly one minute of bell ringing. Apparently the best they could do. Here's an idea. Why don't we set up our own television stations? Who exactly is stopping us?
6.01 News. Presented by RTE's in house Obama loving Jihad fans, the Fembo Commie Pinkos.
6.30 Reeling In The Years. Jihadi music show.
7.00 Fresh From The Sea. Clodagh McKenna visits an urchin hatchery. She'll be looking at the formation of urchins, from birth in the inner city, through early membership of street gangs, right up to their first serious stabbing incident and quick release from custody by Judge Liberal.
7.30 Eastenders. Twice in one day. Cor blimey. Strike a light. Whassup guv. Gadzooks, etc etc.
8.00 Fair City. I've never watched this. (But I've financed it.)
8.30 How Long Will You Live? Doctor Mark Hamilton visits blah blah blah.
9.00 News. Followed by News For The Deaf. (They shout it.)
9.30 The Riordans. A commemoration of RTE's famous farming soap opera which ran during the 1960's, 1970's and part of the 1980's. It might only have run for thirty years but I'm telling you people it felt like a millennium. Tonight's commemoration is a smug exercise in self congratulatory back slapping. The programme features cynical atheistic RTE types commending themselves for the civilising effects on the Irish peasantry of their vomitous synthetic plotlines. My memory of The Riordans and the producers' memory of The Riordans differ considerably. I most remember the crassly manipulative qualities of The Riordans as the producers used the programme's rural country scene to cynically promote condom culture, contraceptive pill culture and many more of their own anodyne liberal atheistic agendas. The Riordans purported to represent the way ordinary Irish people felt about life in general but in fact it was usually just a thinly veiled piece of propaganda for condom and contraceptivist mentalities. In fact it was scripted by a dessicated Northern Ireland atheist specially imported from the UK to do the hatchet job on our faith and our traditions. Any woman in The Riordans who didn't use a contraceptive pill was nearly sure to go down with venereal disease, measles, the mumps, Aids, tuberculosis and The Pox all at the same time. If the baby in her womb didn't simply explode first. Men who didn't use condoms generally suffered the indignity of having their penises fall off. There was never a plotline about women dying from malfunctioning intrauterine devices. Or women dying from pulmonary thrombosis brought on by contraceptive pill use. Or women being forcibly and unnecessarily sterilised and/or murdered on the operating table at the hands of psychotic Irish Times reading satanistic doctors like Michael Neary in Drogheda Memorial Hospital. No. Those sort of plotlines might have upset the ideological apple cart. Best to spare the peasants the truth about the lies you were propagating and the damage your malign ideologically inspired dysfunctions were doing to our country. Eh RTE?
10.30 Hair Of The Gods. Clearly RTE doesn't expect anyone to watch this so I'm not going to review it. Okay listen. This programme is about the global trade in human hair. Seriously. It will probably be watched by the producer's mother. Now folks tell me honestly. When are we going to end RTE's broadcasting monopoly? When are we going to deregulate the broadcasting industry? I mean even committed liberal atheistic abortionist left wingers couldn't want to keep inflicting this sort of rubbish on the general populace. Would they?
11.25 Look At The Irish. Programme about Ireland's contribution to The War On Terror. Arf arf. Hardly likely. This programme is actually about some dead photographer who worked on the French Riviera sixty years ago. Thrilling I know. As for Ireland's contribution to The War On Terror. We've done... nothing. Sent a grand total of nought combat troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Marvellous isn't it? Although we did send limitless numbers of soldiers to help prop up French foreign policy interests in central Africa. Apparently our kleptocratic Fianna Fail government cares deeply about France and French influence in Africa. Why it's almost worth dying for. Go figure.
12.25 News. It's after midnight so obviously we all want another news programme. Barack goooood. Appoint spessshhhalll prosecutor to criminalisssse George Bussshhhhh. Surrenderrrr to Barackkkk. Surrenderrrr to the Jihadisssss. Alllll willll be welllll. Sleeeeeep. Do not adjust your television sets. We are controlling them. Sweeeeet dreeeamssss from The Femmmboo Commmmieee Pinkossssssss.
12.30 Boston Legal. RTE's lawyer fetish continuezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

moment

Kneeling before the image of our lady of Guadalupe.
The hamster emerges from my sleeve and rests in the palm of my hand.
She almost seems to be looking at the image herself.
I am still kneeling.
CS Lewis has written that if you draw near to Jesus you will see glory in every living thing.
I think I'm seeing it.

dublinesque

the heat descends on the city
the city towers and teems
with a million heartless miracles
that the vain say last forever

a man and a woman on a bridge
kiss once the sky unfurls
oh the beauty of that kiss and the briefness
thus passes the glory of the world

idea for a cartoon for my nephew tom

The dogs are playing a football match with the cats.
It's Woof Woof United versus Meow Meow City.
Paddy Pup is captain of the dogs' team.
Rufus, the stray from up the road, is captain of the cats' team.
George the Saint Bernard takes the kick off and runs up the field.
Any cat near him gets bowled into the air by his run.
The referee is Hammy.
She gives a penalty because George played the cats and not the ball.
Rufus takes the penalty.
Rufus runs up to the ball and feints to the left sending dogs goalie Wagger McGrew diving the wrong way.
Wagger McGrew saves the penalty anyway with his long bushy tail.
Rufus says: "Rats!"
Some rats who are watching the match say: "Nothing to do with us."
The match is halted again as the cats discover the dogs have a ringer in their squad.
Ronaldo is playing with a fake tail strapped to his behind.
Ronaldo is sent off.
Almost as soon as play restarts there is another interuption as the dogs forget about the ball and chase the cats up a tree.
When order is restored the cats jump on the ball and burst it with their claws.
Hammy blows the whistle for full time.
They all go in the house for cakes and lemonade.

Next week: Hamster Athletic versus Hen Wanderers.

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

meditations on a day in dublin

Wandering through the Stephens Green Centre art gallery.
There are paintings of members of the pop group U2 hanging on the wall.
Bono, Larry, Philmore and Scrotie.
The paintings are priced at 5000 quid each.
I think to myself: "I'd nearly pay 5000 quid if they'd just take the blooming things down."

Afternoon in the pharmacy at Lucan.
A secret of the universe has just become apparent to me.
No pretty girl working in a pharmacy anywhere on the surface of the planet earth since time began has ever been attracted to a man to whom she has just sold worm tablets.

Evening in Starbucks of Dawson Street.
Across the road I can see a building occupied by something called The New Ireland Assurance Company.
There are adverts in the windows.
One of the adverts trumpets that "€3.13 a day can provide a lump sum of €200,000."
Can provide.
Can indeed.
Rarely happens though I'll wager.
You'll have more chance of getting €200,000 if you throw a dead cat over your shoulder in a graveyard at midnight.
Well, it cures warts.
Hilarious no?
They're still at it.
The financial services people are still playing the same old games.
It doesn't matter how many people have lost money with them in the past, they reckon more fools will be along presently.
We have to start looking out for each other.
We have to start shouting these hucksters off the stage.
In any case if you really feel like giving the New Ireland Assurance Company €3.13 a day, you should remember you're going to end up paying them more than a thousand quid a year.
I'd advise you to keep your money.
Let the heros of the New Ireland Assurance Company start to work for a living instead.
By getting real jobs.
The financial services con job industry is past its sell by date.
Memo to the New Ireland Assurance Company: If you'd care to send me just €20 a day for three decades, maybe someday in the far future I'll pay you ten million quid. No guarantees mind. Depending how I'm feeling thirty years from now.
Ha, ha, ha.

keep on rockin in the unfree world

Nightfall in Teheran.
The lights in the Presidential Palace are burning late.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on the toilet.
He sings to himself.
He sings a parody of a song by the decadent British imperialist infidel pop group Babyshambles.
His version goes:
"Here comes a delivery,
Right from the heart of the misery."
It provides an oddly appropriate accompaniment to the business in hand.
When Mahmoud has finished the task he is performing, he stands up and begins to wash his hands.
He starts singing again.
A strangely plaintive thing.
It's his take on a song by the decadent British imperialist infidel pop singer Kate Nash.
He sings:
"I use mouthwash.
And sometimes I floss.
I've got a family.
And I'm a Jihadi."
The President of Iran steps into the corridor and strolls back to his office.
A faint smile is playing about his saturnine features.
It's always there.
Not for nothing has he become known all over the world as Grinny Ahmadinejad.
He enters his office.
He is alone in that wood panelled room with the plush carpet and the red drapes.
A little room from which destiny may yet decide the fate of the Iranian nation and, who knows, of all mankind.
He can hear the faint sigh of traffic from the street.
He sings.
This time the song is by the decadent British imperialist infidel druggy pop group known as The Chemical Brothers.
President Ahmadinejad is singing:
"Boy meets girl.
Jump start DJ.
Here we go.
Iran gets A bombs.
Jump start world war.
Here we go."
This too has an unmistakeably poignant ring.

an open letter to christian journalists and writers in ireland

Some of you have been writing for the Irish edition of The Daily Mail.
I am not going to dwell overmuch on The Daily Mail's attempts to promote a salacious cultural debauchery while using your work to occasionally pose as a Christian publication.
Instead I would ask you to read The Daily Mail's articles on euthanasia.
These articles uncritically present the viewpoints of murderers and their accomplices.
All these articles are designed to break down public resistance to euthanasia and to tempt suggestible and susceptible people to get directly involved with this type of homicide.
It is my opinion that writing for or working for The Daily Mail is incompatible with being a Catholic or any other kind of believing Christian.
I ask you to consider your position and to cease to have anything to do with these idolators of murder.
By idolators of murder I am referring to The Daily Mail and all who sail in her.
James Healy