valorous idylls chapter 26

Return Of The Man With No Bobble Hat

It is time to go meet my public.

I will venture down Main Street.

I perambulate wobblily.

Grit your teeth.

You can walk.

Gotta get back in the saddle.

Or at least back in the saddlery, arf arf, Berneys Saddlery, to which I take a detour half way down the hill to buy a classic peaked cap from my cousin Jamie.

Helpful hint: If purchasing at the saddlery, always look for my cousin Thomas. He's the one who gives discounts. I found this out the hard way.

On we go.

Arriving at the bookshop resplendent in cap, I am somewhat nonplussed to be greeted by red faced staff whose mouths keep twitching.

What on earth is wrong with these people?

"It's okay," I tell them. "You can laugh."

There is a general outpouring.

The new cap notwithstanding, I am indeed something of a picture with the bright green plastic cane I found in a cupboard, an old scarf from the same cupboard, a coat thrown over my shoulders because I can't wear one properly at the moment, and Lefty The Arm held high like the creature from The Mummy.

"I wish I was tough," I declaim. "You know like the Pet Shop Boys. Then you wouldn't laugh at me. Nobody messes with the Pet Shop Boys. I'm going out to buy a bobble hat. Then you'll all respect me. Nobody messes with a man in a bobble hat. Men in bobble hats are tough. They have to be. Because they're wearing bobble hats."

Personally I find this spiel highly amusing.

The staff at the bookshop for their part begin to look at me with the firstlings of concern.

valorous idylls chapter 25

Dead Men Don't Wear Bobble Hats

"You really think you can live without a TV?" wonders Teresa wide eyed.
"I've lived without one for years, it's just the neighbours keep giving me the damn things," sayeth me.
"Do you not enjoy television?" sez she.
"Too much sex and violence," sez me. "I don't approve. And I don't like being forced to finance RTE's culture war against the Catholic Church through the 180 quid licence fee which the Irish government insists we all pay every year for daring to own TVs."
"Well you've lost the use of your left arm, not your little finger. You can always change the channel," advises she.
"The problem is Teresa old pal," quoth me, "while not approving of it, I quite like the sex and violence."

valorous idylls chapter 24

His Excellency Regrets That He Will Not Be Throwing Out His Television Today

"If you get rid of your TV you're only denying yourself," said the ambassador.
"Honestly it doesn't feel like much of a denial," quoth me.
"But you're making the sacrifice."
"Living without the Murdocks is no sacrifice."
"You won't really make a difference to anyone else," insists he.
"I'll no longer be complicit in the pornogrification of a generation of human beings," sez me.
"But what difference are you going to make?" wonders he.
"For a start I won't be helping the pimps of the television industry meet their wage bills for all those women and men they pay to have sex on their satelite channels," quoth me.
"Oh come on," sez he.
"By the way, what exactly is the difference between a satelite channel service provider who pays women to mime having sex on screen and a pimp who provides me with an actual prostitute?" wondereth me.
"You can get those channels blocked."
"I don't want to support anyone in business who would sell me those channels to begin with."
"I still think you're only depriving yourself of a modern convenience," sez he.
"How about this for an additional reason," sez I. "To own a TV in Ireland, I must pay a tax to RTE. The tax is used to finance RTE's slanders of the Catholic church masquerading as documentaries, and RTE's apologias for the IRA masquerading as history programmes, as well as the pornographic sex and violence which RTE routinely broadcasts masquerading as entertainment. Why would I willingly be complicit in financing RTE's attempts to intellectually and morally debauch the nation?"
"But you don't have to watch it," sez he.
"It's an easier decision not to watch TV if I don't have a TV," quoth me sagebrushily.
"Why not have a TV and only watch what you approve of?" sez he.
"If you agree with me that the sex and violence and ideological manipulation is as bad as heroin," quoth I, "if you really agree, tell me this. Would you keep heroin in the drawer over there by the sink, and say to your family: None of you have to use this, but let's not deprive ourselves by throwing it away. If you really agreed with me that the material being broadcast is as bad as heroin, and I haven't said anything less than that, my essential point has been that the sexualising material on televison is as disruptive and destructive to male and female personhood as heroin, if you really accept my key point, I think you'd be doing the same thing too. I don't mind you telling me I'm wrong. But if you actually agree with me, I can't understand why on earth you would let yourself be a party to what they're doing."

valorous idylls chapter 23

Home Is The Sailor Home From The Sea And The Hunter Is Home From The Hill And Er Heelers Is Home From Tallaght Hospital And Well Okay Sir Alec Douglas Home Has A Name With Home In It

Alone again.
From the corner the television watches me warily.
The ghosts of Paul Simon and the other one enter and set up their instruments.
They being to sing as follows:

"Hello TV my old friend.
I've come to sit with you again.
Because a neighbour softly epiglottal
Left you here while I was in Tallaght hospital
And the words of the slandering climate change pornographers are written in RTE halls
And Brexit Bawls
And whispered in the fake orgasms
Of Babe Station."

An appealing little lyric.
I switch on the sexevision.
A girl pretending to diddle herself greets me.
Ah yes.
If I want to watch that sort of thing I'll go to the Costa Cafe at Smithfield where the IRA have laid on a nice little honey trap for me who waves her booties and struggles manfully to get me to look at her magnificent silken clad thighs while I console myself with a caffe latte, thinking wryly of Professor Eddie Murphy's dictum: If the bitch is in the mafia there's something wrong with the pussy.
Grammer fans will note that pussy in this instance is a metonomy, ie the use of a signifier in place of the related actuality which is signified. or as the humorist James Thurber explains it, the container for the thing contained, his examples being "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," (Anthony doesn't want their actual ears, he wants the function contained in them which is hearing) and a wife saying to her husband: "Another word out of you and I'll hit you with the milk," (She is not threatening to hit him with the milk really but with the container that the milk comes in.)
In all probability Professor Murphy's assessment of a mafia girl's pussy does not refer to the girl's vagina but is a pessimistically speculative reference to the quality, sincerity and communicable diseasiness of her love making contained therein.
I flick the channel.
Ner ner, ner ner ner ner.
Dinging music. (Kildare colloquialism for really catchy music.)
Why it's UFO the old 1960's series.
Here's larfs.
This is the sort of thing I would watch.
It's so ridiculous it's brilliant.
Good shoot em ups too even with the pre Star Wars special effects.
Lots of louche oddly innocent sexiness.
The staff of the early warning station on moon base are mostly sexalacious women with purple hair and scanty work uniforms.
The blokes on the underwater submarines wear string vests which do not cover their pecs in any meaningful sense.
Their may be a realistic explanation why moon base girls have purple hair and short skirts and why submarine fleet guys all wear string vests, but I've yet to hear it.
The plot is a howl.
Earth is under attack from space aliens.
To prevent panic the governments of the world have joined together to fight the aliens in secret.
So the public must be prevented from knowing that aliens are attacking and every dog fight in the skies must be explained away as a meteor shower.
What a shower of old meteors!
It gets better.
The earth based defences are hidden under a film studio in London.
The guy who heads up earth's defences also heads up the film studio.
Ha, ha, ha.
Right there.
That's a doozie.
A top secret all earth anti UFO base under a British film studio.
The luvvies would run to the media, and blab the story in a movie minute.
I flick the channel.
Judge Judy is shouting: "Madam, Madam. I'll kick you in the bawls Madam."
I believe she would too.
I like Judge Judy and would willingly watch her or turn her loose on the Irish get out of jail free card for mobsters justice system.
I wonder what she'd make of Judge Martin Nolan last week refusing to jail a woman who'd smothered a three year old little girl.
Flick.
Lots of retro stuff.
The Prisoner, that McGoohan chap, is still trying to escape from his island.
More dinging music.
Great classic ham acting.
But just a tinge of nastiness that I wouldn't have about the place.
A secret agent resigns form M15 and is kidnapped by his former employers and imprisoned on an island from which for the next sixteen episodes between intermittent druggings and odd pyschological underminings, he will try to escape.
There's an avant garde 1960s surrealism to it that is quaint but the tinge of evil is ever present too.
I don't like it.
Although I do doff my cap to a stark touch of realism. a glorious homage, in the credit sequence each week as we're given a recap of the original kidnapping which shows the hero going home having just resigned from M15 and being followed by a ruddy great black limousine that is effectively the most noticeable car in London.
Whoever advised on that scene, knew the British secret service for real.
I flick.
Violence.
Flick.
Mind numbing music channels.
Ho hum.
Desperation calls.
When all else fails.
I think it's time to have a look at RTE, the Irish national fraudcaster.
After all I've just paid a hundred and eighty quid of my neighbour's money for the privilege of doing so.
Flickatullo.
And lo!
The RTE station on this television is blocked.
Amid all the oddly charming clapped out retro channels, amid the inane cloned debauching music stations, amid the violence and porn dross, amid the conformist Russian propaganda of Putin's Russia Today and the fervourless leftist climate change Brexit Bawls propaganda of Murdock's Sky News, amid all the unthinking crap of the world on tap, the one piece of worthless fervourless unthinking pornographic propagandist State sponsored violent atheistic, abortionist, contraceptivist, euthanasist, crap I can't see, is the piece of worthless fervourless propagandistic State sponsored violent atheistic, abortionist, contraceptivist, euthanasist, crap I've actually paid for.

valorous idylls chapter 22

Home Is The Hero By Which Of Course I Mean Me A Chapter Also Known As Heelers Endorses The Hoover Corporation

The house is dark.
I switch on the lights.
The neighbours have been in.
There is a new fridge, a new microwave oven, a new electric heater, and in the corner of the sitting room a brand new limb of satan, by which I mean a television set.
On the window sill beside the television is a paid up television licence.
The television licence is the documentary attestation of a compulsory tax Irish people are forced to pay if they wish to own a television.
And apparently also, as in my case, if they don't wish to own a television.
The tax is used by the monopoly State broadcaster RTE for its incitement to hatred activities (documentaries they call em) and to debauch the peasantry.
Yes.
So I'm now using my neighbours money to finance RTE's culture war against the Catholic Church.
Hoo baby.
The forces of darkness would have to be some shower of humourless boors not to get a wry chuckle out of that one.
You know folks, I've spent a lifetime trying to escape television.
Now it looks like TVs are actually pursuing me.
Farmer Jones arrives.
"Joanna got you all this stuff," he explains. "She was in with her Dyson cleaning up too. You should have heard what she called you. The Dyson kept getting blocked with dog hairs. Every time it would seize up. she'd curse you from a height. It was a howl. Funniest thing I ever saw."
The noble Heelers nods sagely.
"A lot of people buy vacuum cleaners for style," I muse. "They look great with their Dysons. It's like an Oscar De La Renta  handbag accessory. You could bring a Dyson to an Oscar ceremony and everyone would coo about how great it looks. But if you actually need to clean a really messy house, you're better off with a hoover. Never send a Dyson to do a hoover's work. The Dysons tend to panic when the going gets tough."
And so I end my chapter.

valorous idylls chapter 21

Kabookie With Abeabuchie

They're getting ready to remove some sort of a drain device that has been siphoning off stuff from my arm.
It was inserted during the operation.
Part of the device extends a long way into my arm.
Part of it is external.
I am lying on my side.
A nurse whose name I don't know, stands in front of me to observe.
She has a lilting Donegal accent.
A nurse whose name I do know, styling herself Ruth Abeabuchie, goes behind me and begins trying to damage my arm under the guise of removing the drain from it.
The Donegal nurse frowns.
I keep my face impassive.
The Donegal nurse becomes increasingly upset.
Minutes tick by.
Not one word do I speak.
Finally the Donegal nurse can take no more and raps out in a firm voice: "Do you want me to do that Ruth?"
The question is designed not to alarm the patient, but it means that the observer nurse is instructing Ruth Abeabuchie to cease what she is doing.
Ruth Abeabuchie is startled.
She becomes flustered and tries to cover herself.
"Who fitted that?" she gasps, straightening up.
Suddenly she loses control of herself and strides around the bed.
"If I hurt you," she screams, "you have to tell me."
I keep my face impassive and say nothing.
A third nurse is summoned who removes the drain apparatus from my arm without further shenanigans.