happiness is a warm misprint

(celebrating the 1916 Rising with the Heelers Diaries)

Browsing through magazine coverage of the Easter Rising commemoration parade in my home town.
The coverage is peppered with pictures of modern day descendants of participants in the Rising marching in triumph down Main Street.
It would have been more in their line to hang their heads in shame.
And lo!
The magazine writer gives some interesting back ground information.
He describes: "...Molly Dalrimple whose grandfather was a parrot of the Rising in Carlow..."
Alas poor Molly Dalrimple.
I knew her Horation.
Fembo commie pinko and all that.
I like to think the magazine reporter didn't make a mistake when he described her grandfather as a parrot of the Rising.
He may have meant "a part of" the Rising of course.
But parrot would explain a lot.
So the IRA was filling out the ranks with parrots.
And some of the parrots married human Rah men.
And here's Molly.
To think I never suspected she was half parrot.
The clues were all there.
I remember back in the dulcet Summer of 1986, debating Molly Dalrimple in the streets of Logstown about American foreign policy in the Philippines.
She had challenged me with the brilliant intellectual proposition: "I bet you're one of those lonely single men who never go anywhere."
I had declaimed my position with all the portentous grandeur of a young Minnie Mouse.
My most salient point was to scream "fishwife!" at her.
Sheer genius.
(Kenny Loggins later produced a song based on my street advocacy called: Let's Hear It For The Marcos Regime.)
But I couldn't shut her up.
Damned parrot had me beaten all ways.
Lest we forget.