the ineluctible modality of heeler the peeler

Evening at the Chateau de Healy.
A scream rings out.
"Aiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
By the standards of the old Chateau, it is not a particularly remarkable scream.
Probably just a forlorn house guest getting mugged by the Diana Becerra paintings in the west wing.
Or a passing tradesman encountering the ghost of great uncle Throg in the bad room.
Or maybe a wandering nephew who's inadvertently trod on Paddy Pup's tail.
It could be any and all of these.
Nothing to get too excited about anyway.
Those of us in the television room barely pause from our contemplation of Southpark.
Screams at the chateau are normally not worth investigating.
Certainly not important enough for anyone to lift their attention from the television.
It happens to be a far less offensive episode of Southpark than usual by the way.
Only a few grotesquely cruel innuendos amid the generalised profanities.
Why it's almost charming.
Rather a good plot too.
It's the one where the children attempt to stop Stephen Spielberg from updating his old movies with new digital effects.
There's a great parody of Raiders Of The Lost Ark in the middle of it when Tweak has a bazooka and ambushes Spielberg as he's bringing his freshly reengineered movie to its premiere, and all Spielberg's henchmen have walkie talkies instead of machine guns, which is a merry reference to his redo of ET where all guns in the film were actually digitally taken out of the print and replaced with walkie talkies, but anyway in this parody of Raiders Tweak has the drop on Spielberg and his goons, and Tweak says "I don't care about the movie Spielberg, you can keep it, I just want my friends back," and Cartman gives an emotional "aw," and then Tweak says "except Cartman, you can keep him," and Cartman splutters "hey," and Spielberg challenges Tweak to open fire just like Belloc did in Raiders, and tells him "you want to see this movie as much as I do, go ahead blow it up," and Spielberg's own goons can't believe he's going to let Tweak blow up the movie, which by the way is contained in a wooden chest remarkably similar to the Ark Of The Covenant's chest in Raiders, and they lunge towards the chest, and Spielberg grabs a walkie talkie and clicks off the safety catch and shouts something in Hollywood German, just like Belloc did in Raiders, he shouts "zuruck" actually which is German for "get back," not many people know that, and I'm nearly sure the makers of Southpark didn't, but they threw it in anyway, and Tweak can't bring himself to blow up the chest and he's captured by the men with the walkie talkies which make kerchick sounds like machine guns as the goons click of the safety catches, and clearly I need to get out more.
Back to the chateau.
There's just been a scream.
The shrill timbre of the scream suggests it may in fact belong to my Yogic sister Marie.
So it proves.
Presently Marie enters the television room.
It is a dramatic entrance.
Marie is not quite in high dudgeon.
But her dudgeon is definitely elevated.
I'd say it's a Code Yellow.
"James!" she spits.
She doesn't spit it in a very friendly way.
She spits it like an Old Testament prophet might have spat "Beelzebub."
Rum one, eh?
I thought people who did Yoga were supposed to be perpetually calm.
I look up reluctantly from Southpark.
I'm not too worried.
It takes a lot to worry me these days.
More precisely, it takes a lot to worry me since last night's production of my play Poets In Paradise.
Since last night's production of my play, I don't think I'll ever worry about anything again.
(Cue another long discursive reminiscence. - Ed note.)
I was on stage portraying WB Yeats in the show.
And on stage I discovered that the soprano singing sensation known to scholars of my work as The Brezzer had made an executive decision to liaise with the sound man, introducing a backing track for three songs that I have compelled her to sing unaccompanied in various productions of this very play for the last ten years.
If you were among the seventy strong audience at last night's performance, you might have noticed WB Yeats turning a lighter shade of green every time the Brezzer's backing track kicked in.
It is a night that will live in infamy.
From now on we shall refer to it as the night of the long piano solos.
It was also to be a night of some spiritual growth for the mighty Heelers.
Suffering is good for the soul.
And the suffering didn't end with the backing tracks.
There were other changes which the Brezzer had introduced without my permission.
She and her pal Eilis Drillbits had left little candles all over the stage to evoke their idea of heaven.
My idea had been for the actors to evoke heaven through their acting.
The candles meant my much vaunted fade to black at the end would be a fade to a dimly lit room full of bloody ephin candles.
And there was more.
The Brezzer in the role of an angel had donned a rather more eye catching dress than the one I normally permitted her.
This time she wore a huge white taffetta affair with a train down the back.
The train was longer than the one Lady Diana had on her wedding dress.
My beautiful play was thus transformed from a gentle nostalgic imaginative portrayal of famous Irish writers meeting to share a few drinks after death, into something completely different.
It became a tense urban drama about an angel wearing a huge dress and wondering how to manipulate it in a confined space without catching fire from the candles she'd insisted on scattering about the place.
Sometimes gentle travellers of the internet, it almost seems God put me on this earth to suffer.
It's hardly worth mentioning that there was even more for me to deal with on the big night.
Not just the Brezzer.
For lo!
The Master of Ceremonies was one John Coleman.
Yes him.
The right ham of the devil.
Ten years ago he had played WB Yeats in the first ever production of my play.
Tonight as MC he launched into a witty put down of the noble Heelers which seemed to please the assembled oikes no end.
His put down culminated with the assertion that he had only lost his part in the play because I was afraid he was a better actor than me.
To laughter and some immoderate clapping from the cheap seats (ie all of them) Colers claimed: "They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well I say to you, hell hath no fury like James Healy upstaged."
Ah God will punish him.
Hopefully.
But I digress.
Return with me patient reader, to the chateau once more.
Marie is staring down at me.
Her stare is like the stare from central casting.
Basilisks wouldn't get a look in with her.
(Basilisk Fawlty and those sort of guys.)All I want to do is watch the end of Southpark.
"Did you leave that bloody hamster in the bath?" snarled the sister viciously.
"I did," sez me.
"She nearly gave me a heart attack," frothed the sister.
Ireland's greatest living poet nodded mollifyingly.
"She's gotten a bit old," I explained. "She can't fall or hurt herself in the bath. You know, throughout my whole childhood, I've never had a hamster that lived two years before."
My brother Tom looked up sharply from the television.
"They'd all have lived two years," he pronounced insinuatingly."Except you kept throwing them out when they tried to hibernate."
I waved him to silence and continued my explanation to Marie.
"You see it's sometimes hard for Hammy to negotiate her cage now," I said. "So I like to put her in the bath with a towel to snuggle in. It's a nice level surface and she can run around without hurting herself, and then she can have a sleep if she wants it."
The Mammy stirred in her armchair.
"You put towels in with her?" she cried. "Does she do her poohs and pees in the towels?"
"Hardly ever," I murmured mollifyingly.
I looked back to Marie.
She was no longer there.
She had heard enough and had slipped quietly away.
Vanished on a voodoo wind.
Gone to seek a bath somewhere safer.
Somewhere cleaner.
Somewhere saner.