to the devil a daughter

Evening at the Chateau De Healy.
A stillness has descended.
The family are out.
I've just spent half an hour chasing Greeny Budgie up and down the hall.
She is firmly convinced she is the superior life form and sees no reason to go back into her cage when I tell her to.
Pathos thy name is James.
Now Greeny is back in her cage.
But it wasn't easy.
A little business with the tea towel over her head persuaded her there was no other option.
She's gonna be staying in that cage for the rest of her life.
I stand panting in the hall.
There is that momentary stillness.
The phone rings.
It is like the knocking at the door in Macbeth.
Except it's a phone.
I pick it up.
And lo!
The voice of local actress Siobhan Scattergun fills my ears.
"Reggie McGroarity's wife has had a baby," quoth she after a few desultory pleasantries.
This was a bit of a conversation killer.
McGroarity!
McGroarity the actor.
He of McGroarity, McGroarity, there's no ham like McGroarity.
I knew him Horatio.
He was my most talented pupil.
My greatest disappointment.
The left ham of the devil.
In the distant dawn of youth he appeared in some of my productions.
In fact his whole career might be said to have started with a bit part in my play Vampires Of Dublin back in 1996.
He played a character called The Hero Type who kept bursting into Dracula's castle looking for Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy, anyone but Dracula.
Hilarious, no.
He claims he only turned professional two years ago although I don't remember him refusing the fifty quid I paid him to play The Hero Type.Since that auspicious beginning he's gone on to fame and fortune.
National theatre award.
Lead role in Look Back In Anger.
International exposure through a peculiarly insufferable series of advertisements for Amstel Lager.
Every step of the way his accomplishments have surpassed my own.
And now this.
The universe grants him a child.
The seed of Wanquo shall be king whilest I beget none.
Well you know what I mean.
Again he triumphs whilst I despair.
I shudda seen it coming.
What on earth was Siobhan playing at ringing me with this news?
With sober mien I bid my gibbering phone call informant adieu.
My exact words were: "Nymph in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. Go away."
I stand in the hall.
McGroarity wins again.
Yeah, I shudda seen it coming alright.
I was warned you know.
I still remember the day after the Vampires finished its run in Dublin.
Me and McGroarity were returning home across a misty heath.
We met the Weird sisters.
(Sinead and Kathleen Weird.)
They materialised in front of us out of the mist.
And they cried out:"Hail Heelers, hail to thee Thane of poetry.
Hail Heelers, hail to thee Thane of the Leinster Leader.
Hail Heelers, that shalt write a blog hereafter."This seemed a bit odd.
I replied:"Stay you imperfect speakers tell me more.
By Hammy's death I know I am Thane of poetry
But how of the Leinster Leader?
The Leinster Leader is a mediocre moderately profitable provincial newspaper,
Which I have no intention of ever working for.
And to write a blog stands not within the prospect of belief,
Since this is 1996 and blogs don't exist yet,
So I haven't a clue what they are.
Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence,
Or why upon this blasted heath you stop our way,
With such prophetic greeting.
Speak I charge you."They might have elaborated but at this point Reggie McGroarity himself leapt in.
"What about me?" he asked the Weird sisters.
They responded in the same maddeningly obscure manner as before:"Hail McGroarity hail.
Lesser than Heelers,
In your talent as an actor.
Not so great,
But much greater.
Thou shalt star in an Amstel Lager advert,
Though Heelers star in none.
And thou shalt beget kids who will be great actors,
Though you'll never be one.
Thy seed will act Heelers seed off the stage,
While he spends most of his evenings trying to stuff a green budgie back in her cage.
To be more precise Heelers seed will be Millet, Trill and such like.
Your seed will be people.
Your career will be steady,
While the great Heelers shall fail.
So all hail McGroarity and Heelers,
Heelers and McGroarity all hail."With that they seemed to melt into the mist.
"You weird bitches," I shouted after them.
But they were gone.
Most of their predictions have come true, one way or another.
And now the bit about McGroarity having kids has just come to pass as well.
Perhaps I should mention that I did see the Weird Sisters again on one occasion.
Alone this time.
I met them on the same heath at midnight.
Things weren't going too well in the journalism job which, as predicted by the Weirds, I had accepted at the Leinster Leader.
I reckoned the editor Mick Sneeran and managing director Ian Stewart were trying to force me out.
So against my better judgement, I decided to consult again with these foul mist bound hags.
Was I mad or what?
To have truck with such beings?
People with names like Sinead and Kathleen.
Yuck.
I mean, what good could come of it?
They listened to my concerns and then assured me thusly:"You will never be fired from the Leinster Leader
Until Birnam Wood doth come to Dunsinane.
Or until a company of British parvenus called the Johnston Press
Borrows a hundred and fifty million quid from idiot banks
To finance a takeover of the Leinster Leader.
I mean Cor Blimey, what's the chance of that Guv?
And another 150 million quid to take over 17 other Irish newspapers,
They know equally nothing about.
This after they've already borrowed untold hundreds of millions to take over 320 newspapers in Britain.
Now that's not likely to happen is it?
The Leinster Leader only generates a million quid a year.
And that's if you believe their accountancy department.
So a Johnston Press takeover operation costing 150 million quid would have to wait 150 years to get its money back.
It can't happen surely.
Because if it does those Brit parvenus are going to bankrupt the Leinster Leader and 17 Irish newspapers as well as themselves and the other poor hoors they've already taken over in Britland.
Ooops.
The banks will be okay because the government will give them free money to cover the losses they ran up in the first place by lending to half wits like the Johnston Press.
Faster than you can say Corrrrrrr Bliiiiiiiimey!
But we digress.
You'll never be fired from the Leinster Leader unless all that stuff happens
Which it won't.
Arf arf."Whereupon the Weird bitches vanished again.
You know what gentle travellers of the internet.
Many a time the forces of darkness to win us to their cause, jolly us along with half truths and fail to warn us when they bloody well know that the Johnston Press are indeed going to singlehandedly crash the entire Irish (and British) provincial newspaper industry into a wall buying up newspapers they know nothing about with money borrowed from idiot banks and then firing professional staff members and replacing them with cheap rank and rancid amateurs to try and make back the hundreds of millions pounds they've just thrown away, without realising that when you do something like this, word starts to get around, and presently people wouldn't piss on you or your newspapers if you were on fire.
I'm just saying is all.
Back to McGroarity.
The God of the Hebrews has granted him a child.
He hath not done in like manner for every nation.
I hope McGroarity realises how lucky he is.
Hmmm.
I wonder will the kid be into binge drinking, drugs and porn films.
Or maybe she'll take after her mother.