a short satire on the reporting style of irish newspapers and broadcasters during the present orchestrated flu virus panic

The death toll from the Corona Virus in Ireland leapt overnight by fifty percent.

An astonishing one person died on Friday bringing the grand total of losses being attributed to the Corona Virus to three.

Maisie Baines was 105 years old and looking forward to her next birthday.

"She had so much to live for," one family member sobbed. "Her birthday was coming up. We were going to get her her first pony."

Maisie was rushed to hospital once her family recognised the Corona Virus symptoms.

"We were visiting her in the nursing where we dumped her twenty years ago," recalled her son George Baines, "and we knew right away what it was. It's just like the flu, only, you know, deadlier."

Maisie was detained in an isolation unit as per Irish hospital protocols for Corona Virus cases. No one was allowed to see her.

Only a churl or James Healy or both would dare to suggest that slamming elderly women with the flu into isolation units and not allowing them any human contact would very likely scare them to death.

That's if you actually believe that health board staff actually feed them in those units.

Fine Gael government Health Minister Simon Harris spoke to reporters outside the hospital where Maisie was killed died.

"Panic, help, call the Feds Ma Kettle," said Mr Harris. "We advise the public that keeping calm is absolutely the wrong thing to do under any circumstances except Jihad, the collapse of immigration law, and the IRA mafia take over of our country."

Vice Prime Minister Simon Coveney was more specific.

"The virus seems to be mocking us," mused Mr Coveney nazily. "It's as though it's always one step ahead of us whatever we do. I'm beginning to suspect that some members of our govenrment may actually be working for the Virus or be Corona Viruses themselves."

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar commented: "We're not going to have a lock down. People needn't be afraid on that score. For a start there are problems with the term lock down. So no lock down. But if you come into the street we'll shoot you."

a little night bollocks

Phone conversation with Lisa Baines.
"How are you enjoying the great Corona Virus panic of 2020?" quoth me.
"I'm too busy working from home to enjoy anything," sez she.
"How does a teacher work from home?" I ask, genuinely wanting to know.
"I prepare assignments and send them to the pupils via a website," she blusters unconvincingly. "They send them back to me and I correct them. I also have to prepare classes and conduct them through the website."
She seems a bit flustered by my line of enquiry.
I decide to change the subject from the notional work Irish teachers claim to be doing at home on full pay during the present crisis to something more light hearted and less taxing on the imagination.
"The Fine Gael government is breathing a sigh of relief tonight," I tell her. "The death toll in Ireland being attributed to the Corona Virus just leapt by fifty percent in half a minute. That is to say it went from two dead people to three. The Gaelers were starting to look a bit stupid there for a moment with nobody dying and the Prime Minister predicting a potential death toll of 70,000. At least the instantaneous fifty percent leap in deaths gives him back what passes for credibility among suggestible idiots."
"You think it's all a big joke," said she.
"I think it's all a big con job," I correct her.
"The woman who died today didn't think it was a joke," said she.
"What did she have, like about a dozen extra ailments as well as the flu?" said I. "Knocked down by a lorry was she and they found a bit of Corona Virus in what was left of her?"
"The government spokesperson made it clear that she had no underlying conditions," said Lisa firmly.
"What age was she?" said I.
"They didn't mention that," said she.
"Ah," said I.
"You don't think this is a serious outbreak?" said she.
"I think it's a serious outbreak of the greatest bout of mass hysteria of all time," I said. "They've switched off the Western world for a flu virus. They've closed businesses, factories, schools, colleges and shops. They've closed churches in a way that Hitler and Stalin and Chairman Mao never managed. They've created mass unemployment in countries that were heading for full employment. I think the most prosperous civilisation in history is about to become poor. I'm just asking myself how long our monetary currencies can continue to function when there is no production of goods and services to back them up. And hey. I'm wondering did Vladdie the Pute activate a few sleepers in the World Health Organisation to talk up the flu virus. It's a mighty efficient way of wiping out a civilisation and he didn't have to waste all those expensive nuclear bombs or risk a retaliation. The Trump economic miracle in the USA has been erased overnight. Or if not Putin, how about the Free Masons? Or devil worshippers? Devil worshippers would do it for a larf. One thing is sure. This isn't a pandemic. This is a flu outbreak. And it is being opportunistically exploited as a gambit by Statists at the UN to usurp the sovereignty of free nations. That's two things. Two things are sure. Flu outbreak. UN gambit. Devil worshippers. Three. Three things."

expostulation and reply

Walking towards Dunnes Stores in the town of Naas.

A security woman with blue plastic gloves steps in front of me.

"You're not going to search me for the Corona Virus?" I ask her.

"No, I want to let know that you've got to enter by the door over there," sez she.

At the door over there I find a group of people waiting.

"They're asking us to queue?" I enquire.

"They are," says a congenial lady.

"You probably already got the virus just from talking to me," I enthuse.

On principle I find I cannot queue to enter Dunnes Stores.

So I betake myself to Swanns emporium where they''re letting any virus laden eejit walk in off the streets.

"Have you got hen eggs?" I enquire of a shop assistant.

"We have duck eggs," she says.

"I can't eat those," I tell her. "Hens know what they're doing. But I'm not going to eat something that's been up a duck's arse."

Ah it was hilarious.

Worth dying for.

I return to the Bungaleau de Healy.

It is a lovely warm March day.

Time for a little hedge cutting.

I've been in a five year battle to control a rampant hedge.

The hedge is winning.

As I clip, trim, saw, and top the trees, a student nurse wanders by.

"It's a bit uneven," she comments on my work.

"That's on purpose," I explain.

"You're making it look like that on purpose?" quoth she.

"I'm shaping it," says I.

"It's a really uneven shape," rejoineth she.

"Hedge cutting is an art," I explain. "Like sculpting. You've got to get a feel for it. Be the  hedge. Not everyone can do it."

I  have visions of a scene from Tom Sawyer where I provoke her into cutting the hedge for me by pretending I know what I'm doing and making her jealous of the arcane activity.

She switches the conversation to the Corona Virus.

"I'm home for the duration," quoth she.

"Do you believe it's real?" sez me.

"It's real alright," says she.

"You're a bit gullible," commenteth me.

"People are dying from it," says she.

"A grand total of two deaths in Ireland and both were ancient people on their last legs who already had cancer, rabies, cirrhosis of the liver, and heart conditions," sez I.

"Well my grandad is 91 and I don't want him to die," she proclaims morally.

"I don't want your grandad to die either but I''ve got news for you, he's going to die some day. We all are," I predict brutally.

"Thousands of people are dying in Italy," expostulateth she.

"Ah Italy," sez me, "traditional home of the highest annually inflated virus death tolls every winter with mafia shootings, nursing home deaths, road fatalities and deaths by natural causes all routinely attributed to the flu in the interests of marketing pharmaceutical vaccines. Only this time they're not selling a flu vaccine. This time they're selling the pandemic itself on behalf of their World Health Organisation puppet masters and hilariously they're pretending it's not the flu."

"If you're not taking it seriously," muses she. "Maybe I shouldn't be talking to you. I might get it from you,"

"Maybe I shouldn't be talking to you," I counter, "if you believe it's anything other than a flu virus. I might catch your neurosis and start running around like a headless chicken. Oh the humanity."

She wandered off.

I watched her go.

In the warm hush of early evening amid the promise of burgeoning Spring time, I saw no shadow of another conversation with her ever.

the earth dies talking bollocks

Driving.
The shock jock Niall Boylan is on the radio.
He's saying to a woman: "Your father is 91. Sure he's only a young lad."
Niall Boylan is being nice.
We're all doomed.
Niall Boylan also makes the point that it's not too pleasant for the elderly to be hearing some of us saying that the virus only kills old people.
But that's not what we're saying Niall.
We're saying that every year some of us die in old age, and some of us die with flu germs in our systems, but that's not an epidemic or a reason to shut down the country and the economy and put the army on the streets.
If it was, you could do it once a year during flu season in perpetuity.
Peronally I'm also trying to point out that so far there is a rather disappointing death toll in Ireland with a grand total of just two people's demises being attributed to the Corona Virus.
I mean it's disappointing considering that Prime Minister Leo Varadkar says up to seventy thousand may die.
Both of the supposed victims were ancient.
Both had serious underlying illnesses that had nothing to do with the Corona Virus.
And both the deaths of these two Corona Virus victims were not in any meaningful sense caused by the Corona Virus.
It sounds like I'm saying something callous about the elderly when I say the flu virus is not fatal only if you deliberately misinterpret what I'm saying or if you consider our shenenigans mongering Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to be elderly at the age of 40.
Because I am certainly saying anything callous that I can think of about him and his attempts to reinvent himself through an orchestrated public health panic based on a flu virus.
Ho hum.
All the radio stations are engaged in the same Corona Virus kabookie.
A Limerick station styled LMFM is broadcasting this gem without any apparent awareness of the internal contradictions: "Don't listen to social media fake news. We'll give you the facts about the Corona Virus live from the government and Health Service Executive as they come in. You'll find everything you need to know here."
Hilarious.
The irony is screaming.
As was I for a few minutes after I heard the above.
I park at the Domincian church in Tallaght a suburban village outside Dublin.
As I stroll down Main Street I see little queues of people at the doors of disparate premises.
The banks and some other businesses are allowing customers to enter only one at a time.
The people queueing in the street will probably catch their death of cold, I think with a wry smile.
Near a pharmacy a drug addict waiting not so patiently to pick up his methadone prescription (It's meant to wean them off drugs.) is getting a bit ansty.
"Oi've been waitin heeyar in deh streeh for twenty minutes," he tells me in a traditional Dublin accent. "It's a bih mad. Whar are dey tinkin of?"
There is an aura of gentle panic in the cafes and supermarkets that have remained open.
It's as though staff members are torn between being genuinely afraid and savouring the drama.
Truth be told, there are people who love a good panic.
Later that day I visit the town of Naas.
Smilar scenes.
Notices on shut up businesses apologising that they have closed for the duration of the Corona Virus pandemic.
Some cafes open but not allowing you to sit in the cafe.
You can buy a cup of coffee and leave.
What is the point of that?
I find a cafe that is willing to dice with death by letting you sit in it, and I get a big breakfast in late afternoon.
Most of the tables have been removed to facilitate social distancing.
I and two other customers eye each other warily, wondering to all intents and purposes which of us is the Scanner.
I am too embarassed to wipe my nose.
Back at the chateau Aunty Teresa accosts me.
"Did you hear Leo Varadkar's speech?"
"I must have missed it."
"He was brilliant. He cited Churchill. He was a bit like Churchill himself."
For long moments I am too moved to talk.

the new irish national anthem

(This is to replace Sinn Fein's Blood Spattered Banner proposal since Sinn Fein have not managed to assume power in the election that the media deemed them to have won. The third largest party in parliament Fine Gael, while clearly losing the election with 35 seats in a parliament of 160, are somehow still the party of government. They therefore have first dibs on the new national anthem which with apologies to the 1980s British music combo styled China Crisis, goes something like this.)

Wake up wake up
We're kings in a Fine Gael style
With our minds made up
And our big suit business smile

Got another thing yo
So crucial in every way
We're gonna cure the flu
And throw democracy away

The residential party man
With dashing looks and a good sun tan
The residential elect man said
Whatever you vote
You get us instead

Ner ner ner nerdle ner
Ner ner ner nerdle ner

Wake up wake up
We're kings in a Fine Gael style
With our minds made up
And our big suit business smile

Got another thing yo
So crucial in every day
We're gonna cure the flu
By shutting down the economy

The residential Fine Gael flowers
Lose elections but stay in power
The residential Fine Gael man
Dancing now on the sinking sands
The residential elect man said
What you vote
You get us instead


Ner ner ner nerdle ner
Ner ner ner nerdle ner

the saint patrick's day massacre

(Vladdie the Pute has a cousin in the Irish parliament)

"Have the Gaelers gone mad! Are they serious about social distancing? How can they enforce it?"
"It's the way it is. In a public space you've got to stand a few feet from everyone else. No touching."
I sighed.
I had a feeling.
A feeling in my water.
Sort of like when Darth Vader senses a bowel movement in the Farce.
Just as many of the cafes, pubs and restaurants who are being forced to close by government edict, will never reopen, it seems eminently sensible to assume that many of the flirty women who are being interdicted from their favourite passtime by governmental anathematising of proximity, may never flirt again.
For the first time the Corona Virus shenanigans appeared to me as a crisis.
I struggled for words.
"Why it's... it's... unholy."

la finegaelerata

Morning in Ireland.

A lone wolfen poet driving along.

Some cafes already closed.
The staff in that one over there are gonna have to go back to bitch school.

An odd thought strikes me.

The cafes are closing down in the town of Newbridge.

We will not see them open again in our lifetime.

I stop for petrol.

The tired looking woman at the counter in the garage hands me my change.

Her hand is covered in a thin rubber latex glove in case she'd catch something from me.

Enlightened critical thinking or some other such viral infection.

"The government are putting the country on lock down," she informs me conversationally.

"They're what?" I say.

"They're sending in the army," quoth she.

"I wouldn't put it past them but how do you know this?" enquireth me cautiously.

"A soldier was in here five minutues ago," sez she. "He told me. They've all been called back to base. The announcement will come at 11am today."

I head to Lidl supermarket seeking provender. Is provender the word I want? PG Wodehouse would know.

Two staff members are busy spraying disinfectant on a stack of customer baskets.

I shake my head pityingly.

One hands me a basket.

"You won't catch anything off that," she smiles in what is clearly an attempt to reassure or seduce me.

"I need a basket with a handle," I explain, selecting a functioning basket.

Off I go down the aisles.

The place is busy enough for early morn.

And of course there are no toilet rolls.

So the rumours of a run on toilet rolls are true.

I find my way to the Easter egg stack and select a Cadburys.

You can't go wrong with a Cadburys egg.

Even in the zombie apocalypse everything seems rosier with a Cadburys gug.
Or perhaps that rosiness is the rash that is the first sign of the Corona Virus.
Ten seconds you buy a Cadburys gug.
Twenty seconds you sneeze.
Thirty seconds your head explodes.
David Cronenberge would have a field day.

At the counter I try some badinage with Sexy McSexx. (Anna Maria.)

"People are mad," I say. "They're panic buying toilet rolls. But what are they going to do for Cadburys chocolate eggs when the virus gets really serious?"

"More for us," she says.

Encouraging.

Back in Kilcullen I rambled contagiously down Main Street.

The American commentator Ben Shapiro has advised people to support local businesses during the present crisis, or shenenigans as I call it.

The nearby cafe was open but full of staff bitches (no customers) so although yearning for their big breakfast meal which is delicious, I couldn't go in there.

I contented myself with buttonholing a passing Padre on the street.

"Yer man is open," I said. "We should support him. His breakfast is delicious. But I can't go in because of the bitches."

"I'll go," said the Padre with a touch of self sacficising heroism.

"Did you have mass in church on Saturday evening?" I asked by the by.

"We did," said the Padre.

"I heard you were closed up," said I.

"You didn't hear it from me," said he.

And presently I saw him through the cafe window in splendid isolation being served by smiling bitches and tucking into the steaming hot breakfast which verily I thought my due.

My own crystalising thinking as evidenced earlier in the meditation about Newbridge's shitty bitch filled cafes, is that by the time Ireland's rump Fine Gaeler government has finished ordering businesses to close, many of those businesses will never reopen.

I wandered into a bookshop and bought The Inimitable Jeeves and a cup of hot chocolate. The Inimitable Jeeves is in the top three PG Wodehouse books of all time. The other two are What Ho Jeeves and The Code Of The Woosters. Oh and Psmith In The City.
Top four I mean.

Ben Shapiro advises people to purchase gift cards from businesses they wish to support.

I think it's a good idea.

If we don't have these people running businesses on Main Street, our country is going to be a whole lot more miserable eftsoons.

The proprietor of the book shop told me she'd heard an army man on the radio saying the rumours of a lock down were false.

"I think they're going to do it," I told her.

"I'm hoping to stay open," she said.

"I think they are going to force you to close," said I. "They've gone mad with their own power. They're like the President in Woody Allen's Bananas ordering the citizens to wear their underwear on the outside so his men can check it. It's a comic opera. They're not able to stop. The govenrment are no longer in control. The game is playing them now."

snurds on film

"Don't start panic buying," advised Farmer Jones.
I laughed and laughed and laughed.
"There are two reasons why that won't happen," I said. "Firstly I'm not going to panic about a flu outbreak. Secondly I haven't got any money. Even if I was inclined to panic, I couldn't panic buy a thing without some ready cash."
I flicked on the television for the evening news.
And lo!
Ireland's bankrupt bolshevick State run broadcaster RTE had filled their main evening news programme with stories about the Corona Virus.
Or Covid 19 as they like to call it.
One thing they don't call it, is the flu.
Which is what it is.
That's why they're bankrupt folks.
There was nothing else.
No mention of any other news story happening in the world over the past few days.
No mention of Saudi Arabia engaging in an oil price war with Putin's Russia. Small beans I suppose. The Saudis have halved the price of oil but who cares? Who'd be even vaguely interested in a story like that? No mention of the Saudis arresting three members of their own Royal Family suspected of preparing a coup. No speculation about who was beyond what I would tentatively call the Putative coup. Sure Saudi Arabia only has a little less than half the world's energy resources. Why on earth would we focus on fripperies like THAT. No mention of Russia's resovietising President Vladimir Putative rounding up opposition politicians and their supporters in the streets of Moscow. The fate of democracy in Russia is not a story. We've a flu virus to worry about. No mention of the Jihadis killing Christians in Nigeria at the rate of a hundred a month. No mention of a Turkish Interior Government Minister Suleyman Soylu threatening to bring down the governments of Europe by flooding Europe with Muslim migrants, saying specifically on CNN, and I quote: "Europe cannot endure this, cannot handle this. The governments in Europe will change. Their economies will deteriorate. Their stock market will collapse." How on earth could anyone make news of that?
Best to stick with hysterical incitement to panic jibberish about the good old fashioned newly renamed flu virus Covid 19.
We'll all be rooned says Hanrahan, before the night is over.
That's the real news.
Yes.
According to RTE nothing else happened on the planet earth today except the ****ing flu virus.
One of their most poignant virus stories featured a government Minister Simon Harris snivelling plaintively: "People aren't taking us seriously."
This was followed by RTE's hilarious in house expert George Lee saying: "Young people in particular just laughed at the social distancing requirement."
Yes, young people will insist on standing beside each other and talking.
The evil swine.
So the heroic 35 seats in a parliament of 160 seats Fine Gaeler government has now ordered the closure of all pubs and restaurants.
This follows the closure a day earlier of  churches, schools and colleges.
This government was always going to find the notion of social distancing appealing.
I had predicted that something in social distancing, police officers telling people to stand apart in the street, would speak to the fascist roots of Fine Gael. I thought they would never resist such a thing once formerly fascist Italy introduced it.
Ho hum.

Cheap shots thy name is James.

By which I mean me.
But if the Corona Virus were sentient it would be laughing up its hole at them.
They're suggestible nuts.
There's no limits to their suggestible nuttiness.
Their suggestible nuttiness is vectoring throught the herd like a... like a suggestibly nutty virus.
The government, media, health boards et al, (particularly Al, he's the worst) are all megalomaniacal nutty nut nut nuts.
They've got the thuttibinns real bad.
If our country has been hijacked by nutty nut nut nuts where will it all end?
Back in the somewhat sane backwater world of Farmer Jones television room, a wave of panic gripped me.
"Give me a loan of a hundred quid," I begged Farmer Jones. "I must buy something."