rum days in erin's isle

 

Breezing into a supermarket my consciousness falls on the newspaper rack.

There is a stirring in the Force as Obi Wan Kenobi always used to say when a strange presentiment crossed his mind.

And lo!

What light through yonder newspaper rack breaks,

It is the east and the super soaraway Sun newspaper is, er... the sun I suppose.

Well you know what I mean.

The headline that has stirred my soul runs:

PUTIN THREATENS TO NUKE IRELAND.

That sounds about right.

But of course Putin has  no more threatened Ireland than he's threatened Termonfeckin a cutely named little town in Ireland that he's also probably never even heard of,

He has made a careless remark to two about nuking the British isles though.

The Irish edition of the Sun simply found the local element in his more general remarks.

As the Sun headline writer sees it, if he nukes the British isles that would strictly speaking include Ireland therefore Putin is threatening Ireland.

I'm guessing that the Sun's Manx edition this very day has a front page banner headline: PUTIN THREATENS TO NUKE THE ISLE OF MAN.

Ditto the Channel Islands edition.

Ditto the Outer Hebrides.

Bless.

It's nice to feel included.

The ghost of TS Eliott appears beside me.

He intones in a singsong voice: "This is the way the world will end. This is the way the world will end. This is the way the world will end. Not with a bang but with a super soaraway Sun headline finding a localised marketing element in the Apocalypse."

"You're right there TS," sez I. "And what does TS stand for anyway?"

"Tough shite."

"Really?"

"When I was being baptised the priest burnt his finger with the candle. He had been just about to name me. And he turned to the Bishop who was attending the ceremony for sympathy. And the Bishop said Tough Shite. And somehow yer man thought the Bishop was prompting him and the name got inserted into the ceremony."

After bidding TS Eliott go away, I repaired to a cafe to browse through some news reports on my mobile phone.

Did you ever think we'd be watching the news on a phone?

Fox had a commentary from General Jack Keane on the Ukraine war.

He is a capable commentator except for his prediction on the eve of the Ukraine invasion, veritably as Putin revved up the tanks, that there would be no invasion and that the drumbeat to war was being talked up by America's President Biden and his administration for their own interests.

We all get it wrong sometimes.

Today the sensation scene in General Keane's soliloquy goes: "European leaders need to step up. They need to meet with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. So far the only one doing it is Boris Yeltsin."

I found this commentary quite quaint.

Boris Yeltsin was a famous Russian President,

He hasn't visited anyone except perhaps the occasional medium, since he died fifteen years ago.

The Fox News host interviewing General Keane either decided not to correct him or else didn't notice the faux pas.

Presumably General Keane meant Boris Johson who had indeed just met with President Zelenskyy.

The commentary was doubly quaint since Fox News has lately been  quite merciless in deriding President Biden of the United States for supposedly being senile.

Fox and the super soaraway Sun are owned by the same people by the way.

Those lovable billionaires on borrowed money and borrowed time, the Murdock family.

You gorra larf.

Over on Sky News I found one Kay Burleigh (two Kay Burleighs would have been ridiculous) intoning with Obi Wan Kenobi portentousness: "Breaking news. It's what we all feared might happen. The Supreme Court in the United States is set to repeal Roe Versus Wade."

Good old Kay Burleigh.

Her funereal angst had been inspired by apparent moves in America to overturn a court ruling from 1973 which illegally legalised the murder of unborn children.

Burleigh didn't show this much emotion when Putin tried to grab Ukraine.

And of course Sky News is owned by the same people who own Fox and the super soaraway Sun newspaper.

So the Murdocks profit from Sky's barbarous pro abortion propaganda while profiting at the same time from the feigned occasionally pro life stylings on Fox. They have one media group posing socialist. And one posing principled integrity. And one posing bum tittee bum bum. (Hint: The Sun.)

You couldn't make it up.

Tiring of current affairs I switch off the phone and ramble from the cafe into the Post Office.

The guy on the counter, a chap called Aidan, says to me: "I was in your neck of the woods last week."

"What's my neck of the woods?" quoth me.

"Kilcullen Theatre," says he.

"Did you go to the play?" quoth me getting a bit interested.

"I did. It was brilliant."

"Ah it wasn't brilliant. Ould Irish slap and tickle comawlya rubbish. Men in dresses. All so desperately funny. Everyone laughing because they're afraid."

"No really it was terrific. Did you not go?"

"No. But I wrote it."

"You didn't."

The bustling urban post office seemed to fall silent as I recounted the tale of how the real playwright Jimmy Keary had refused five years ago to allow his play be produced in Kilcullen under any circumstances because of sublime changes me and my uncle had inserted in the script, but somehow five years later a Kilcullen director (by the name of Eilis Drillbits) had got in touch with Jimmy Keary, given her word that she'd do his version and nothing else, and then mistakenly gotten her hipster doophus hands on the version rewritten by my Uncle Bernard complete with those magical additional gems from me, the very gems which had so particularly incensed the playwright and which had been specifically ruled out by him under the rubrique "no changes at all," and the glorious goon (director Eilis Niblicks) having faithfully promised the playwright to produce his rubbish word for word, had then staged my brilliant forbidden version without any changes to my changes, honorably insisting all the while to her actors that they not change a word she thought Jimmy Keary had written. (Her actual name is Eilis Philips - Ed note)

"So what bits did you write?" asked Aidan from the Post Office.

"Did he dance with a broom?"

"He did."

"That's mine."

"Oh."

"Did he say you can't say blackmail because it's racist, you've got to say African American mail?"

"He did."

"Mine again. Did he preen in front of a mirror saying lines from movies?"

"Yes."

"Me again."

"Well it was a great play anyway. Whoever wrote it. Gerry O'Donoghue was hilarious in the lead."

"Yes he's very good," sez I. "And it's his first time back on stage in  about forty years I think. He was a very accomplished actor in his youth. Charismatic stage presence. A really strong authoritative acting persona. I don't know why he stopped acting for so long. The only thing I've seen him do in the interim was hosting an Irish night style thing at Kilcullen theatre where he wasn't really acting. He was just being himself. And he was unconscionably good at that too. If RTE had seen him they'd have put him on television. But aside from that I'm fairly sure he's done no stage theatre for forty years. I've  no idea why he stayed away for so long."

"Do you think he fell out with someone?" enquired Aidan from the Post Office seditiously. "Is he a bit of a cantankerous fucker? Bit of a bollox is he? "

"Just the opposite," said I. "He wouldn't be a fan of mine. But his behaviour towards people generally is impeccable. I mean he's almost universally liked and respected. He's never been known to do a bad turn towards anyone. Even people he mightn't be too fond of. He treats everyone with courtesy and respect. Unless you're an unborn baby or an evil British imperialist. He doesn't like either of those."

"Actually I know him very well," grinned Aidan from the Post Office. "I was his neighbour for years and he was the best neighbour you could have . I've been to Africa twice with his charity."

"So why did you ask me that question?"

"Ah I was just wondering what you'd say."