december momentarias

 

Twas in the bleak mid winter.

I mean yesterday.

I was returning from church where I'd been praying for an aunt who has just died.

As I drove up the avenue to the old homestead, a robin flew from the hedge and landed directly in front of the car.

I wound down the window and called: "Howya Robin."

He showed no interest in moving.

I got out of the car with the engine still running.

The robin pecked about happily close to my feet, still directly in front of the car.

The behaviour was unusual enough to make me think.

I wondered could the bird be bringing a greeting by the grace of God from Aunty Eileen.

Something similar had happened a few years ago with the death of an Uncle.

As I drove down the same avenue, behind schedule and in a hurry, heading to church for the posthumous remembrance known in Ireland as a Month's Mind, a dove had landed directly in front of the car.

He was so close and disinclined to move that I was afraid I'd run over him. Like the robin, he'd stayed where he was until I got out of the vehicle, said a few words, and gently moved him on.

I thought the creature might have been from Uncle Bernard whose remembrance I had been going to.

I ended up being late for the prayer service because of the dove.

And now today's robin from Aunty Eileen.

I remember the psychologist Victor Frankl recounting in his book Man's Search For Meaning that on a freezing winter's day in the Concentration Camp where he'd been doing forced labour, a little bird had alighted near him and looked at him fixedly.

He'd instantly thought of his wife who unbeknownst to him, had just died in an adjoining Concentration Camp for women.

It is an opprobrious and dangerous thing to try and contact the dead through mediums but I do believe that God may permit a blessed greeting from a loved one via the birds or even sometimes in dreams.

These things call for care and discernment.

Uncle Bernard's wife Mary was startled to find a robin in her house the Christmas after the Uncle died.

The robin was perched beside a photo of Uncle Bernard and Aunty Mary.

Again the coincidence was enough to make me wonder.

Last word to the husband of a woman who a few years ago was thinking of setting up a restaurant cafe and cookery school in Kilcullen but was having doubts about the project.

She told me that while she dithered over what to do, a robin came to her windowsill and she felt that the robin had somehow been sent by her recently deceased father and that he was telling to her to take a chance on the new business.

Her husband was with us in the kitchen when she told me the story.

"What do you think Tom?" she asked him.

"Ah Siobhan," he said consolingly, "sure the hedge is full of fucken robins."

upper echelons

 

Vladimir Putin, President of all the Russias, sits at the grand mahogany desk alone in his office.

It's the same red draped sinister atmospheric office we used for the sledge hammer subtle satirical segments featuring President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran (of fond memory) a few years ago.

The desk is the same one two, I mean too.

There comes a light tapping on the door.

"Enter," proclaims President Putin in excellent Russian.

A group of nervous bespectacled grey and black suited functionaries troop in from central casting.

They are waving clipboards which my spies tell me are basically  note covered paper pages clipped to a thin piece of board or even cardboard.

"Excellency, Excellency," splutters the lead functionary.

"Yes," says Putin agreeing.

His reputation as a megalomaniac is exaggerrrrrated. (I've no clue how to spell exaggggerrated but I know you've got to sass it.)

Still megalomaniacal or no, his close staff are understandably a little nervous of him.

"Excellency," continues the lead functionary, "Bad news."

Vladimir Putin raises an eyebrow.

Aside from the raised eyebrow he does not show emotion.

(He's likenable to the famous British James Bond actor Roger Moore in this respect. I would hazard the raised eyebrow for every emotion is about the only thing he and Rodge would have had in common.)

"Yes?" he says again a tad ominously.

"Excellency," fumbles the aide, "the European Union... the Union... the Europeans..."

"Yes man," raps Vladimir Putin, "out with it."

"They've imposed new sanctions on us," manages the aide.

For a moment Vladimir Putin's face is a stunned mask.

There is tension in the air you could cut with a balalaika.

Then the President relaxes into a broad grin.

"What!" he exclaims. What? Sanctions! You're having a larf. You had me worried there for a minute. I thought they were going to go nuclear or something when you all trooped in here doing your worried frown routines. Sanctions indeed. I laugh in the face of their sanctions. I mean they give me a billion dollars a day for oil and gas because the prevalence of Green Party polity which we have sponsored in their cultures, the veritable colonisation and subjugation of all their other parties to an hysteric environmentalist agenda, has stopped them producing their own energy supplies. So they have to buy it off me. It's a stone groove Man. The Europeans are as dependent on me to keep warm as little babies. All thanks to the Greens. So what are they going to do now? They're giving me billions a day and they think some slap on the wrist amounts to sanctioning me. Ha, ha, ha. Oh I'm so scared. Oh please European Union don't sanction me again. It hurts my feelings to be sanctioned while you're financing my war in Ukraine with a couple of billion dollars a day. I'm afraid I might die laughing. Ha, ha, ha. Now wait. What exactly are they going to do for a fresh sanction? Will they stop smiling at me when they're paying me the couple of billion quid a day for their oil and gas? Maybe they'll no longer send me Christmas cards. Or what if they don't offer me a sweet when the Cadburys' Milk Tray are being  passed around at the next environmentalist conference? Possibly they may just ignore me at parties? Ha, ha, ha. And if you think their dependance on my oil and gas is a hoot, wait til you see how they manage when the Greens ban motor cars and force them all to use those dinky toys that don't work which Elon Musk and his ilk are churning out with government subsidies and er sanctions on their own populaces to force them to buy the bloody things. The poor Europeans are going to be so cold and all stuck at home with cars that don't work. Ha, ha, ha. But I'll keep them nice and warm in the new Soviet Union. Yes. The Soviet Union is back baby. Yeah baby. Yeah. Do I make you horny? Nyah ha ha Gee Force. Alright, alright, stop cowering you lot. Leave me. Leave me. I would be alone."

When the functionaries are gone, Vladmir Putin stands up.

His backing band, including the two good looking girls from the Ikea ad, emerge from behind the drapes and launch into their latest hit which is a cover of a Jonah Louis standard.

Vlad sings:

"I'm no good at invading countries.

I always get rebuffed.

So I bomb them to smithereens.

I just can't get enough.

I like to look real tough.

Ner ner ner nerdle ner.

That's why you'll always find me in the kitchen at parties.

Yes you'll always find me in the kitchen at parties.

Yes you'll still find me in the kitchen at parties.

Ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner  ner ner ner ner ner ner ner.

That's also why you'll always find me subverting Western Europe and America with Green Parties.

Yes you'll always find me subverting Western Europe and America with Green Parties.

Ner ner ner nern ner ner nern

Ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner

Ner ner ner ner ner ner ner

Nerdle nerdle nerdle ner..."