(Heelers Week)
Monday:
Checking out Father Thady Doyle's Youtube channel which has a growing following on the internet. It's called God's Cottage after a prayer house that he runs in Glendalough. He's also the editor of The Curate's Diary an internationally distributed magazine of spirituality, commentary and analysis of current events which I've always recommended. There's meaty reading in it and good testimonies of miracles regardless of the bits I don't agree with. Thady is his own man. Who knows folks, maybe I myself am occasionally wrong about things. I suppose I would have been shirty enough about the magazine's opposition to the US Bush Administration's direct action against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq nearly two decades ago. More recently I've disagreed with the editor's endorsement of the Covid vaccines and his assertion that Covid is genuinely a pandemic and that our governments and health boards can be trusted in dealing with it. I'd trust em about as much as I once trusted Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and Isis. They do not have our best interests at heart. Today's programme on Fr Thady's channel features the man himself complaining that Youtube have censored a previous episode where he addressed the vaccine issue. I have suggested in my quieter moments that Thady should rename God's Cottage something like Pfizer's Cottage. But for the Gauleiters at Youtube he's just another anti Vaxxer in spite of his consistently pro vaccine stance. When I saw his plaint against Youtube censorship I allowed myself a wry smile. Then I laughed and laughed and laughed. I was like Pope Francis jeering Cardinal Burke for getting Covid. Cardinal Burke like me opposes the vaccines. But you gorra larf. Later today I went to a chess club. I like chess rather a lot. I hope it doesn't interfere with my blogging.
Tuesday:
Lunch with Rowena Fortescue in the Silverware cafe.
"Have you picked out a table?" sez she.
"I'm looking for one where I can ogle an attractive girl over your shoulder while you're prattling away," quoth me. "But there's nothing doing. The cafe is full of the plain people of Ireland. There's not a single good looking person here. Oh my mistake. Yer one there. With the golden hair. This is the table for us right nearby."
"I'm sure she'd be thrilled to know of your interest," sez Rowena a trifle drily I thought.
"Do you think so?" quoth me. "Some people aren't that keen on being ogled."
We sit.
Rowena informs me that one Reggie Baines has died and then adds cryptically: "His partner was at the funeral."
I enquire innocently enough: "Business partner?"
"Er no," quoth she.
"Bridge partner?" enquireth me more in hope than expectation.
"No," says Rowena meaningfully.
"Well what's left?" sez me/
"Life partner," pronounces she.
She's still looking at me with a hint of challenge as if she wants some sort of comment for posterity.
"A partner of the female sexual gender sort of thing?" wonders me Basil Fawltily.
"No, a man." sez she.
"Well that's rum," murmureth me.
"What's rum?" says she.
"Years ago I went into his shop with my mother," I muse. "While we were there, Reggie asked me: 'Working on any plays James?' And you know I'd love that sort of question. I started enthusing about the one I was working on which was Lady Windermere's Fanny. And he kept looking from me to the Mammy as though I was speaking the basest most grotesque vulgarisms. And the more I tried to get across to him the play's theme of satirising sex, body image and swearing in an absurdist style, the more he looked completely appalled. So I went to the actor John Coleman, left ham of the devil, whom I wanted to play Lord George in Lady Windermere's Fanny. And I told him about Reggie looking disgusted the moment I mentioned the title. And I said: 'Are people such small towners that a word like Fanny could upset them?" And Colers said: "Well James it's the last taboo." And I exploded: "How in heaven's name could it be a taboo? It's a cute word for bum." And Colers said: "Not in this country." And I said: "What is it in this country?" And Colers said: "It's the unmentionable part of the female anatomy." So in this country fanny has a completely different meaning from every other country on earth. And Rowena old pal, I'd never got the memo. The upshot of it all is that apparently the Irish have ruined a perfectly cute word for bum and at the same time made my greatest theatre play unperformable."
"So that's your memory of Reggie Baines," sez Rowena demureishly. "What's so rum about it?"
"What's rum is that up to now I didn't know he was in what you modernists call a relationship with a man," I ruminated. "I mean here he was living with a man doing whatever they do. And he thought the title of my play was shocking. I mean that's rum. I mean by any standards that's rum. That girl over your shoulder is smiling at me."
"No she isn't."
"I'm telling you she is. And she's rubbing her tiger skin leggings in a curiously meditative way that's about as indecent as one of my play titles."
Rowena found herself unable not to look around.
As she turned the girl swallowed a fly or something and changed her face to a scowl.
It was all quite rum.
Back home I discovered a news item about the death toll from Covid 19 in Britain. The total death toll in England and Wales over the past two years for people whose deaths were attributed solely to Covid was a mere 15,000. The annual mortality rate in Britain from all causes is 700,000. The average age of the people whose deaths were attributed solely to Covid was 82. So we might conclude that they most of them were on the way out anyway.
Wednesday:
Angela Merkel the former German Chancer (Chancellor surely - Ed note) has commented re her retirement from office: "Ich habe meine arbeit immer gern gemacht," which means "my work is done." When I heard this I laughed and laughed and laughed. You and me both eh Angela! I suppose her work is done if she means totally collapsing immigration law, importing an entirely deracinated nouveau proletariat and thereby ensuring Europe will have a future of permanent civil war and rulership by gangs. Ho hum.
Wandering up Main Street Naas, I come upon another locked lawyer's office, closed for the duration of what the boss believes is a Covid 19 pandemic. The firm is Niall P O'Neill's. There is a faded newspaper clipping in the window featuring a cartoon by the Irish Times' sledgehammer wit Martyn Turner. The cartoon shows a wall with graffiti on it proclaiming in large letters Martyn Turner's view of the early darys of the Covid 19 crisis. Beside the wall is a notice that says: 'Covid Suppression For Dummies.# The graffiti says: 'It's easy really. Just keep as far away from everyone else as you possibly can for a month or so.' He's added in smaller print: 'Terms and conditions apply.' He has further clarified his point by drawing two men beside the wall with speech balloons. One is saying: 'It's only common sense.' The other is replying: 'Have you noticed how uncommon common sense is these days?' And that cartoon telling us to accept government lockdowns and facemasks which don't work and assuring us it would only be for a few weeks, that cartoon I tells ee, has been in the window of the shuttered offices of Niall P O'Neill Solicitors for the past two years. I weep for my generation.
Thursday:
Phone call from Rowena Fortescue.
"James I have Covid."
"Ha, ha, ha."
"No it's serious."
"Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee, chortle, ha, ha, ha, this much fun can't be legal, haaa, haaaaaaaaa, ha, ha, ha. That'll teach you to say women don't smile at me in cafes while stroking their legs in a suggestive manner. God is punishing you. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, hoooeee, ha, ha."
"James, you've got to get tested and self isolate."
I stopped ****ing laughing straight away.
Somewhere the sound track to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly went: "Aaahiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaahiiiiaaaahhhhhh!"
It is true what they say.
The claw of the gawdelpus gets us all in the end.
Friday:
Like a man going to the scaffold I logged onto the Stalinist Irish Health Services Ministry of Truth website. There I read up on the list of symptoms:
'Five seconds, you start to sweat..
Ten seconds, you can't breathe.
Twenty seconds, you explode.'
The Health Boards really should stop letting David Cronenberg do their websites.
Saturday:
Time to buy a Covid self testing kit.
There are two pharmacies on Poplar Square.
One dispenses vaccines and one doesn't.
I went to the marginally non Nazi pharmacy called appropriately enough Poplar Square Pharmacy and bought a self testing kit.
Made in China.
Of course it was.
Just like the Covid 19 virus.
I would have laughed and laughed and laughed only I haven't laughed once since yesterday.
I forked over three and a half Euro for the pleasure of a nonsense test that nobody needs.
Forking madness.
I ask you, Missus.
Back home, watched by a pair of dogs, a parrot and a budgie who seemed not entirely immune to the irony of the thing, I set up the self testing kit on my kitchen table.
Samples from my sron were duly inserted in the device.
Then we waited for fifteen minutes.
Then the result came through.
I peered at the gauge.
The self testing kit informed me that as far as it was concerned I did not have Covid.
In my own language this dial would read: "You have no trace of that **** arse shenanigans *******ing bollocksology of a disease that people shouldn't be arsed testing themselves for anyway. This is mass psychosis at its worst. Oh Heelers. How suggestible are you? Thanks for your three Euro fifty you ****ing gulpen. Next. Just ****ing grow up and tell your governments and Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies and the Chinese commuist party to **** off and die."
I think testing kits that gave honest readings like this would be marketable.
And also actually very worthwhile.
And perhaps right now somewhere in eternity the ghost of Reggie Baines is smiling.
