heelers defies the swastika

 

Driving.

I stop in the little town of Dunlavin.

There is a cafe there called An Lar which is an Irish language term meaning the centre.

Get this.

The proprietors have refused to resume serving customers indoors even after the relaxation of lockdowns because they object to our gawdelpus government's attempts to force them to demand that customers produce vaccine passports before being allowed indoors.

Rather than bow to the government's attempt to dragoon them into the Gestapo, the management at An Lar are seating no one inside.

I'll tell you one thing.

We need more proprietors like these.

So many cafe owners have been inconvenienced into acquiescence to the government's thuggery by legislation threatening them with multiple thousand dollar fines for every unvaccinated customer they serve on their own premises.

At least these guys are resisting.

This is the sort of cafe I can support and I urge anyone who reads this to do likewise.

At a table outside where customers are permitted by the State to sit without showing a vaccine passport, a woman originally from Poland tells me that one of her Irish friends doesn't want to be friends with her anymore because she has refused to take the vaccine.

"She has mental issues," says the Polish woman. "The constant news reports about the virus have not helped her. Now she is quite paranoid."

"People are very suggestible." I murmur. "And fear is a great way of controlling them. You Poles have dealt with Nazi invasions and communist invasions in recent history. You recognise what's happening here from experience."

"I never saw this with the Irish before," said the woman. "And I think it's getting worse."

"I think you're right," said I.

"What are they going to do to us?" sez she.

"They're going to try to hurt us," sez I.

I drove on to the mountains and stopped in Glendalough.

Father Thaddeus Doyle's house of prayer was in full flu virus panic mode with neurotic internal signage.mandating neurotic distancing protocols and insisting on neurotic face masks which do not prevent the spread of any illness but sure as hell cause a few.

The prayer house nestles in sight of the Glendalough round tower and is called God's Cottage.

They should rename it Stalag Luft Covid 19.

I bought a few books there and a few back issues of the Curate's Diary magazine which Thady edits.

As I chatted to Thady's bookshop manager, someone called from over my shoulder: "James, James is that you?"

It was Eilis my old boss from County Council days.

She said she hadn't seen me in thirty years but would know my voice anywhere.

I'm wondering was our meeting today one of those providential encounters set up by the Almighty for a larf or just chance.

I mean what were the chances of me being at the House of Prayer just at the time an old boss from thirty years ago was there?

Okay maybe that's not so very unlikely.

But I mean an old boss that actually liked me?

What were the chances of that?

The enigmas endure.

Eventually I bid the old boss adieu. Outside the prayer house she and her husband give a cheery wave and set off energetically through the woods towards the mountains. I for my part walk a full fifty meters  from Thady's cottage with my dogs to the fish and chips outlet in view of the ruins of the monastic city of Glendalough.

Fish and chips, Fanta orange and a cup of tea are best appreciated while sitting with dogs contemplating ancient ruins, I always find.

Later this evening back at the chateau, leafing through my newly purchased back issues of the Curate's diary magazine, I see that Father Thady has, in Poker players parlance, really doubled down and gone all in, both on his advocacy of vaccines and his endorsement of government policies regarding the Corona virus.

In one article he notes that twenty nuns have died of Covid 19 at various convents run by the Felician Order in the United States.

I rush to a computer to do a bit of research.

It is hard to get details.

Internet articles are being streamlined ideologically to bolster the flu virus panic.

But I am able to establish that the nuns were aged from 69 to 99.

Well we're all going to wring our hands about the 99 year old anyway.

She had her whole life in front of her, hadn't she.

Oh the humanity.

Among the sparse information available on the internet  about the dead nuns, I discern the fact that they were retired and lived in four separate convents.

Although there were no real details, I'm hazarding that among twenty retired nuns, aged in their seventies, eighties and nineties, some of them had serious health issues that did not relate to the Covid 19 kabookie.

Here is the news.

I like nuns.

Generally speaking, they are heroes of life and of faith.

But I cannot accept that the 99 year old nun's death is in any way a justification for forcing BBC broadcaster Kate Shaw aged 44 a healthy adult woman, wife and mother who was in no danger of dying from Covid 19, to ingest an experimental vaccine made out of unborn babies murdered by abortion which killed her.

It killed her slow enough too.

Kate Shaw had time as the vaccine metastasised her blood into clots to plead: "Don't force people to take these vaccines."

Nor can I accept that any of the other Felician nuns deaths justify forcing 17 year old Canadian boy Sean Hartman to ingest an experimental vaccine for an illness that couldn't kill him. The vaccine killed him deader than Kate Shaw.

Each one of the back issues of the Curate's Diary magazine that I bought at Glendalough turned out to be packed with gung ho advocacy for the vaccines and for current government policy on the so called pandemic.

I retract what I said about changing the name of Thady's prayer house to Stalag Luft Covid 19.

He should not call it Stalag Luft Covid 19.

He should call it Pfizer Inc.

Because that's whose interests he is protecting.

His magazines are otherwise thoroughly worthwhile by the way. For the record, just so's you know where I stand, the Curate's Diary is still nearly the only truly Christian publication in Ireland, alongside the fast fading Alive newspaper produced by the Dominican province which still retains something of the quality of the genuine though it has also in my neurotic view gone a bit inert and maybe even a bit IRAeee since Brian McKevitt stopped editing it.

But I digress.

In the Curate's Diary, Thady also regularly features some good critiques of internet commentators which are worth the price of admission. I think his reservations about Michael Voris and the Church Militant website are probably correct. But I still have hopes for Lifesite News which the bould Thady Doyle excoriates roundly.

As I finished fulminating over Father Thady's advocacy of experimental vaccines made out of unborn babies murdered by abortion, an aunt of senior years beetled through the kitchen.

"What are you doing here?" I said in surprise.

"Why wouldn't I be here?" quoth she.

"I thought you'd be at Bridge Club," sez me.

"Oh we've cancelled it again because of Covid 19," explaineth she.

They'd cancelled it gentle readers, mark you, just three weeks after they restarted it.

"I thought you guys were all vaccinated and you weren't letting in your friends who weren't vaccinated," expostulated me.

"Yes, but we got scared anyway," said the aunt.

Ah.

The claw of the gawdelpus gets us all in the end.