caring for beginners

 

"Maisie Baines has an article on Brian Byrne's website."

"Well there's a match made in hell. The insufferable meets the unreadable."

"Did you read it?"

"I can't remember."

"It's about the importance of community values and human compassion. She says she loves her community, her family, her husband, her work and her dogs."

"I'd say at least one of those statements is true."

"You know she's just had a major operation."

"To remove her spleen, was it?"

"No, it was..."

"Oh I know. The doctors looked at her and said she'd got her head stuck so far up her own arse that there was nothing they could do."

"No. They've operated as I've just told you and you'll be happy to know she's going to be alright."

"We can't have everything."

"James what is going on?"

"I think her exact words when I mentioned a few years ago in passing that Kinneavey and the Maloney drug gang, and their Tinker accomplices in tandem with the clan gang operating out of the Alke Babish chipper and junkies from some of Kilcullen's more prominent failed families were inflicting some of their more severe harassment activities on me were... oh what was it she said... ah yes... 'I don't really know you James,' and then full of community values and compassion she added 'maybe if you hadn't written some of those things on your blog, more people would want to help you now.' And I thought: She's absolutely right. She doesn't know me. And ever since I've found it a most interesting moral struggle to care a whit whether or not she lives or dies."