the powers that be

The noble Heelers wanders up a corridor at Kilcullen Parish Centre.
A rather good looking woman is talking at the far end to the inimitable Uncle Scutch.
You will be spared gentle readers my usual maunderings about her looks because I have since been informed she's happily married.
Walking up the corridor I do not recognise her.
She exclaims as I draw abreast: "It's the famous James Healy!"
This is the sort of greeting that I heartily approve of and I therefore choose to linger.
For his part Uncle Scutch immediately decides to argue the point the woman's just made about my fame.
"Do you know James?" quoths he dubiously.
"Everybody knows him," answereth she.
"How do you know him?" challenges the Uncle more dubious than ever.
"Oh you know," murmureth she somewhat evasively.
Reticent with the words, eh.
Clearly the situation demands further professional elucidation from someone with a Certificate in Journalism from the College of Commerce Rathmines.
"Who are you?" I enquire bluntly.
"I'm Rosario Power," sez she.
Realisation dawns.
"You're not Paddy Power's daughter are you?" I blurted.
"I am," sez she.
This was all a bit rude even by my usual standards of rudeness.
The late Paddy Power was an influential government Minister and parliamentarian in the Republic of Ireland for many decades. I shouldn't have said his name to her the way I did. It's just public figures often seem like public property and anyway I tend to communicate in blurts.
I hadn't stopped blurting yet either.
"Your sister Loretto," I babbled, "I met her once about thirty years ago and when I told her that she had been named after an order of nuns, she proceeded to give me the slagging of my life. She was merciless. I'm turning red thinking about it now. I thought I was quick with the words. I never stood a chance. And your brother Sean, the guy in parliament. I once wrote some unfair rubbish about him and Fianna Fail on my website. Sorry about that. And there someone else in your family I've met. Oh. There's your other brother with the beard who the one was in the Green Party, the one that exposed the developers giving brown envelopes to Councillors. I phoned him once to say well done about..."
You gotta understand bold readers I didn't realise she was married at this stage.
I'll rue the day when it's not worth my while blathering desperately at strange rather good looking women I meet in corridors just on the off chance.
(The above line is best appreciated if you imagine me saying it in the voice of Mr Burns from The Simpsons television cartoon.)
Uncle Scutch decided to throw me a life jacket.
"The meeting's about to start," yawneth he, "we'd better go in."

time and tide

Flicking through the channels on the sexevision.
I alighted on a politics programme presented by the broadcaster Vincent Brown.
Someone among his guests was show boating about the Catholic Church.
It was: "Catholic Church this... Catholic Church that... and Catholic Church the other..."
Vincent Brown stopped the twaddle.
Vincent Brown said: "Most sex abuse cases arose outside the church. And no one is doing anything about them."
I stopped dead.
In the past it seems Vincent Brown has been very much misunderstood.
Mainly by me.
Yes, I have spoken harshly about Vincent Brown in the past.
I will not do so again.

horrorscopes

(with Mystic Muggins)

Aries (The Goat): The moon is in your Uranus. But it could be worse. Think of the other orifices it might be in. Try not to worry so much about the future. A man with the letter 'Y' in his name will ask you to marry him. What they hey. Say yes.

Libra (The Something Or Other): The mucous is in your nostrils. Try cutting down on dairy and exercising more.

Sagittarius (The Chicken Curry): Yummm. Chicken Curry.

Capricorn (The Goat): Your propensity for climbing every mountain should not lead you to think you're that Von Trapp woman. You're not.

Cancer (The Crab): Saturn rising in Betelgeuse will leave you feeling listless. Learn to think about the good things in life: Sunsets, the mountains, oceans, trees, the first Die Hard movie, Mad Max 2, etc etc.

Zogsplox (The Brief Case): A series of events at work may conspire to give your day a lift. A man with 'Y' in his name will ask you to marry him but you should refer him to one of your friends born under the sign of Aries.

Gemini (The Twins): Yummm. Twins.

The Rest Of You: Just wing it.

oooh ahhh up the haircuts

THE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE COLUMN

I am loathe to praise the Sunday Independent Newspaper but it performed a public service at the weekend in publishing an article by Mairia Cahill about the terrorist murder gang styled the Irish Republican Army or IRA.
Mairia Cahill speaks with authority about the IRA.
In fact she is one of those rare people in the present era that the satanic hoodlums of the IRA are actually afraid of.
Her article makes clear that the IRA is functioning now as a fully fledged international criminal mafia.
She notes that the IRA has been laundering money in the Republic of Ireland through front businesses including a chain of barber shops.
Her words are a significant contribution in raising public awareness of the ongoing economic and political hijacking of Ireland by the narco traficante terrorists of the IRA.




(Copy to the Irish National Lottery commission whose computer terminals seem to be crashing an awful lot these days in shall we say mysterious circumstances prior to draws.)

au revoir mes judges martins nolans

Ireland's most infamous Judge Liberal, a character styling himself Judge Martin Nolan, hit a bit of a home run in the Republic's court system this week.
Batting against the Rule Of Law, Judge Martin Nolan sentenced a forger to nought years in prison.
That is to say he let him go.
Officially Judge Martin Nolan went through the motions of imposing a sentence of four years but Judge Martin Nolan suspended the implementation of that sentence... for four years.
So nought years in jail for the forger.
Bear in mind that this is the same Judge Martin Nolan who sentenced a fruit importer to six years in jail, with no years suspended, for the purely notional crime of mislabelling garlic as apples.
You gotta hand it to mafia IRA judges.
They know no shame.
Seriously though, he's doing a brilliant job.



(Copy to Judge Paul Carney.)