"Daffyd O'Shea has a part in a new ad for Bord Gais on television," Yankee Joe announces.
"Why don't you just shoot me?" I expostulate.
The Yank acts surprised at my attitudinal indisposition.
" You're always saying you gave him his first break in show biz. I thought you'd be pleased."
"I'm not a bit pleased. I want him to die. Die. Die. Die. It's gonna come from the sky."
"That's a bit harsh."
"Ah, everybody's making it big but me. What's the ad about? I mean what is the plot of the ad?"
"Daffyd is a family man calling out a Bord Gais repairman on Christmas day. The repairman thinks he's being called out to attend to some problem with the gas supply. But Daffyd is really just inviting him round for dinner with his family because he knows the repairman would otherwise be alone at Christmas at his work station."
"Well as long as they're keeping it real. Excuse me while I projectile vomit. Was the family depicted wearing face masks? Did they insist the non threatening family friendly gasman show a vaccine permit?"
"Er no."
"If I had a subscription to Bord Gais, I'd cancel it. Mark my words. I will never die in another Bord Gais explosion again."
"Oh right."
Having delighted Yankenstein long enough I wandered over to Aunty Mary's house where the aunt informed me of the arrival and availability of fresh brown bread.
"There's brown bread in the kitchen if you want it."
"Where did you get it?"
"If I told you, you wouldn't eat it."
"As long as it wasn't provided by the Maloneys or Kinneavey, or the Alke Babish chipper clan gang or the Hutch gang, I assure you I will eat it."
"It's Noel Clare."
"And where did he get it?"
"He made it himself."
"Well he's hardly infected the thing with his Covid 19 virus on the off chance of getting me. So I'm in. But I didn't know Noel Clare made bread."
"He does."
"Okay. Lead on Macduff."
Later still I get a phonecall from the aunt.
"You didn't have to eat it all."
"It went very well with the soup."
"You took my Sully And Scully soup?"
"It was delicious with the Noel Clare bread."
And yet later still this very same day, I was driving by a Dunnes Stores outlet.
A sign proclaimed Christmas trees for sale, reduced from 35 Euro a tree to eight Euro.
"At eight Euro I'm in the Christmas tree market," I murmur snaffling one up.
With the largest Dunnes Stores eight euro Xmas tree packed into the rear seat, I head to a church.
The priest is about to start mass.
I sit in the front pew.
The celebration and the prayers rise to heaven.
When it's over I hear a gruff countrified voice behind me.
"Sir, hey there, sir. Excuse me sir. Excuse me."
I can sense the outraged decency.
I recognise the symptoms.
This fellow has watched the national fraudcaster RTE for two years and imbibed nothing but pharmaceutical company propaganda from bankrupt newspapers like the Daily Mail, the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. He's a thoroughly decent gentleman. I know without looking. And he's absolutely sure that the Corona virus would go away if only people like me would stop spoiling it for everyone, do what we're told, chug down an unborn baby milkshake and wear face masks.
As he struggles to get my attention, I do not deign to look around and after a minute he departs.
Get used to this folks.
The effect of an artificially induced general panic, as government policies fail dismally at every level to alleviate the spread of a Flu virus (these failed policies including enforced distancing, face masks, lock downs, and compulsory ingestion of untested vaccines made out of aborted babies) the effect of all this on the public, I say, is that many people who have put all their faith in the scoundrels, Statists, and confederacy of pseudo scientific dunces who govern us, the effect on the public I tells ee, is that the more suggestible and manipulable of our ordinary citizens are finally seeking to make themselves enforcers against the rest of us, for those malicious government policies which have proved from the outset to be so abjectly wrong minded and so demonstrably unsuccessful.
We have to stop this cult of conformity.
Even if, generally speaking, leftist conformist atheistic abortionist pseudo scientific hippies do make the best brown bread.
************************
Footnote: Recently some benignly motivated readers of the Heelers Diaries have informed me that there is a possible reading of the above work of art which would leave an opening for the interpretation that I was claiming top small town brown bread making science boff Noel Clare was the gentleman in the church attempting to accost me about face masks. Fans of my work will know that such a reading is not tenable. Noel Clare has never called me sir and in any case he hasn't been seen in a church for well nigh on fifty years, ever since his childhood in fact when Pope Pius the Twelfth or some such supposedly hit him a stuff in the face for not giving a respectful greeting while passing in the street.
