quare times

Picked up a copy of the Times of London this week.
They have an Irish edition.
Thought I might pose with it on Main Street.
I'm going for the executive look this season.
It's as close as I get to a new year's resolution.
During a lull in the posing, I wandered into a cafe and for want of anything better to do, began to read the Times of London.
And lo!
What light through yonder window breaks.
It is the east and my cousin Freddie Treeves is the sun.
Amid a cornucopia of wearisome arteekles about climate change, there was one particularly dramatic surprisingly fascinating splash in the centre page featuring my own cousin no less and his shop being inundated in the south eastern town of Enniscorthy.
Here's larfs, thinks I sympathetically, reading eagerly.
The Times gave a little back story, pointing out that Freddie's family business had traded since 1880.
Close enough.
The family were indeed doing business in the nineteenth century.
Some romantics say as early as 1820.
But that's only if you consider sheep stealing a business.
Arf arf.
I'm not going to fault the Times on that.
No the flubber is that while the family have indeed been in business since 1880, they have been in business in Enniscorthy for just the last twenty years.
The 135 year old business was here in Kilcullen.
So we wouldn't really have been in a position to note any climate change down Enniscorthy way before the Britney Spears era.
The Times didn't bother finding out that our family bought the Enniscorthy premises at the side of a bloody great river so recently. Nor did the Times find out that we made the purchase during a long hot Summer without bothering to check whether the nearby river flooded the premises during Ireland's traditional winter storms. (Plot spoiler: It did.)
Under the pression of a sort of selective noblesse oblige, Freddie did tell the man from the Times that the premises had flooded once before, around the year 2000.
My Uncle Ron confrimed for me this evening: "Sure it's always flooding."
Still.
No need to let something so arcane as a reality check spoil a good climate change story.
The most poignant bit of the Times account was where they described my fatigued gritty tousled cousin (played by Bruce Willis) sleeping upstairs in the shop as he had stayed there late trying to move stock to safety.
He woke up in the morning and found the ground floor under three feet of water.
He was eventually evacuated by boat.
He really was.
The Times got that bit right.
I would have to quibble though with the three feet of water reportage.
And knowing Freddie I would also quibble with them about the reasons for an evacuation by boat.
I'm guessing maybe twelve inches of water in the ground floor of the shop.
And the necessity of a boat to evacuate the cousin?
Well Freddie is a big tough rugby player and could stroll through three feet of alligator infested water without a problem for anyone except the alligators. Only he is also a rather natty dresser and would not like to get his cuff links or his Brooks Brothers trouser suit damp.
Listen folks.
It's not exactly a scene from the disaster movie Twenty Eight Days Later, is it!
I can practically hear Freddie's exclamation as he looked downstairs yesterday: "F------  water, It'll ruin my Calvins. I'm calling the cops."
And the Paddy Whacks brought in a boat to evacuate him,
You gorra larf.
The punchline of this Pullitzer Prize winning piece of Times romanticism came with Freddie telling the reporter: "We don't want relief assistance. We want people to stop shopping on line and to start buying from local retailers again. That's the only way you're going to have businesses on main street."
Ah yes.
I agree with Freddie on that point.
At least he's put his finger on the real cause of climate change in Ireland.
King Canute couldn't have said it better.
By the by, there's another more bathetic boat story doing the rounds from our winter of climate change.
Assistant Prime Minister Maisie Baines (Or some such name, she's the Labour Party woman, election slogan: "And abortions for all") was visiting a disaster zone in the west of Ireland.
She was being transported in a canoe.
The canoe tipped over.
The canoe tipped over because the depth of flood water in the disaster zone was not sufficient for a canoe to gain traction.
Oh the humanity.
Well folks, I do not believe the planet is doomed from climate change.
But I do think the Times of London is doomed.
It can't be long now.
Last word to teeny bopper temptress pop group Bewitched, who like all Irish teeny boppers are aged in their fifties.
Take it away girls:
"And the rain goes on
On and on again
Don't blame it on you
Don't blame it on me
Blame it on the weatherman"