the beast must giggle

The noble Heelers quaffing tea in the mid afternoon.
Around me the Tearman cafe teems with life.
The door jingles.
And lo!
Writer, broadcaster, poet Brian Byrne enters with the fresh whiff of his latest award for Saving White Rhinos or Community Service or some such thing lingering on the breeze.
I gotta tell ya.
These awards are meaningless folks.
They give em to anybody.
Well nearly anybody.
I groan inwardly as the Great Byrne approaches.
I bear him a grudge you see.
He's always outing me in print for some purely notional wrongdoing or other.
You'd think I'd be small game for the man who saved the white rhino.
(Served the community - Ed note)
Why doesn't he go after the ephin IRA or some of the drug dealers living on Main Street?
But no.
I can't so much as fart in mixed company without a passionate expose of my crimes immediately appearing on his witteringly inane excrescence of a blog.
And now.
Now this galoot is going to want to talk to me just to show the world that in spite of my propensity for resentment, my unforgiving vengefulness and my perpetual ill will (towards him), he's the better man.
Why do you test me oh Lord!
My mind races.
Maybe I should just cut him dead.
I should here explain to my Jihadi and mafia readers that for most of us in Ireland cutting someone dead traditionally means simply not speaking to them.
That's the sense in which I am using the phrase vis a vis my cafe guest.
So right.
If he says anything, I'll remain in a pool of beatific superior stillness.
Not a word will pass my lips.
Quoth the Heelers nothing at all, as Edgar Allen Poe might put it.
Or would that be too obvious?
I mean I can't keep using the silent routine every time.
My fans will start to think I'm becoming too predictable.
Never mind the Jihadis and the mafia.
Even Edgar Allen Poe might be a tad disappointed.
Ah.
The Great Byrne draws nigher.
There are three empty seats at my table.
Great Scott what if he joins me!
No he's passed and is sitting nearby.
But we're not safe yet.
They always want to talk to me.
Lesser writers I mean.
Oh the ineveitability of it.
Chintzy chintzy cheeriness.
Half dead and half alive.
Okay, as soon as he says something, I'll indicate the three empty chairs and proclaim: "Brian I'm here with Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas Hardy and Alfred Lord Tennyson. I can't talk to you at the moment."
Then if he persists I'll positively snarl like Basil Fawlty in the Lord Melbury episode: "I'm talking to Lord Tennyson."
That would be good.
The minutes tick by.
Slowly realisation dawns.
Well I'll be.
He is not in fact going to talk to me.
When he leaves, as he eventually does, I sit there a wiser, weaker man.
I am too abstacted to even notice Franziska the Kraut sexor waitress refilling my tea cup with coffee.
Ah Franziska du bist schon, ich liebe dich und ich wunsche ihn viel spass heute abend.
But that thought comes to me later.
I tell you at this moment I don't even notice the fair Franziska.
I am thinking only of the writer, broadcaster, poet Brian Byrne.
Not talking to me.
The cheeky little shite.
I wonder what I did on him.