waiting for a hurricane

Standing on the doorstep of the post office in Kilcullen.
I am there to collect what is fondly referred to in the Republic of Ireland as Jobseekers Allowance.
The building is shuttered.
For a moment my senses reel.
What on earth is going on?
Realisation dawns.
I look around.
Those exaggerated weather reports on RTE last night have led to the whole town being shuttered.
Probably the whole country too.
I had walked up the street without noticing.
Hunger will do that to a man.
Briefly I wring my hands.
"The ****'s don't want to work," I cry aloud. "The ****ing trade unionised Paddy Whacks are having another day off. Hurricane ****ing Ophelia my ****ing ****. It's any excuse. Oh there's a purely fictional hurricane coming. Down tools. Shut up shop. We the wooooorkers refuse to work in case the ****ing wind might blow at us. The unemployed can go ****ing starve. You useless ****ing *******'s."
 Not a soul stirs on the street except for the broadcaster Brian Byrne who is mooching around with a camera looking for hurricane out takes.
"The Met Office should issue a warning about him," I mutter darkly.
The ghost of Chris De Burgh appears beside me.
He starts to sing a parody of one of his catchier hits.
He sings:

"Standing on the street in Kilcullen town.
Wondering where the hell everybody has gone
There's a hurricane coming
And everyone's trying to get awa-a-a-a-a-y
Time of the month
Time of the year
Weather report from RTE is clear
Find a safe place to hide
There's no place here
Then the lights go down
On that South Kildare town
And the drug dealing skangers
Who drive around in Audi bangers
Are all high up and dry
Yeah yeah yeah
Suddenly there's a movement to the pharmacy
But nobody's getting any Lemsip today
The staff have all gone away
And they've closed down the border li-i-i-ne
Because there's nowhere you can hide
Waiting for a hurricane
Oh there's nowhere you can hide
Waiting for a hurricane
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nerdle nerdle ner ner ner ner"

I quite like this song
A few Muslims would have crowned it.

road test

A few dulcet winters ago, the Irish Meteorological Service apparently decided to affiliate with a secret society of ultra left extremists in America called the Weather Underground, and came up with a new explanation for Ireland's perennial rain showers.
"It must be climate change," said Weather Girl Mollie Fembo. "This rain is worse than the rain we've been having for five thousand years. If we extrapolate lower rainfall for the years in which no statistics were taken, and if we selectively alter readings from the nineteenth century when figures were actually being taken but which don't aid our case, why then we can prove higher rainfall now. The science is established. I just feel it, you know."
(You're a moose Mollie.)
And now a reminiscence.
In the year 2010 my brother Doctor Barn drove his top of the range BMW himmlerwagen XJ42  into a puddle on the Curragh road.
The car died.
I am firmly convinced the BMW conked out permanently for psychological reasons.
All the talk about climate change finally got to it.
Anyhoo.
For a few days I became a chauffeur driving the brother around in my beat up 1990 Nissan Almeira..
I got to see how modern medicine works, watched him doing his Trapper John MD routine, hitting people on the chest, shouting "live, live," being paid for it, telling the peasantry I was his clerk, introducing me as James Hargreaves, and all that.
Nothing I wasn't used to.
Then one night we were driving down the Curragh road.
The deepest puddle in Irish history loomed ahead.
Too late I realised it was the BMW killer.
And I was going too fast.
"Sorry Barn," I said as we hit the water.
My car surfed it like a pro.
We drove on in moderate disbelief.
The moral of this road test:
Give the glory to God but a 1990 Nissan Almeira outperforms a new BMW every time.

today they said

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin: "People who go to Mass are a dying breed."

James Healy: "Funny. I thought left wing Soviet era infiltrators of the Catholic Church in cahoots with the drug dealing, people trafficking, child abusing, devil worshipping IRA mafia and its associated secret brotherhoods of evil, were a dying breed."