seasonal fare

 

A trip to Clondalkin for a jobs fair,

 Darth Vader is hiring for the salt mines of Endor or, more precisely, the post office is holding a last minute recruitment drive to fill vacancies for Christmas relief work,

Clondalkin is a once small town, now a suburb of Dublin, with a long history dating more than a thousand years,

There's an ancient round tower in the middle of the place, rising up amid the shopping malls and housing estates.

At the jobs fair a milling throng of enthusiastic miners are crowding around a lesser number of also milling and befuddled looking post office staffers.

I work my way to the front of the throng.

A chubby looking postal executive with a good natured face and a mop of black hair gives me a form to fill out.

It is a bare enough form.

Name, address and telephone number,

Fill it out and you're in.

I fill out the form.

I hand it to the post office executive.

He glances at it and recoils.

Now bold readers.

I am a simple fellow.

But I know a recoil or, shall we say, a start of recognition mixed with horror, when I see one.

"Did you recognise my home town?" I venture cautiously.

"I think I recognise you," he answers with a rueful smile, then adds: "Did you study journalism around 1994?"

I give him a hard look.

"You definitely weren't on that course," I tell him.

"My wife was," he says.

"Don't tell me who she is," I say. "Let me guess from the look of you."

I give another hard stare.

Which of my classmates would have ended up with this guy.

"You're married to Jackie Lynam," I announced.

"Bingo," said he.

"Not a bad guess," I said, "considering we never met."

"I think we must have met," said the man but there was an evasive note in his voice.

"No we never met," I said with certainty. "Maybe your wife reminisces about me sometimes in the long winter evenings."

"No she doesn't," said he decisively.

An odd sedition seized my spirit.

"Does she call out my name at moments of passion?" I ventured.

"No she doesn't do that either," he said somewhat drily, the smile no longer quite reaching his eyes.

We both stood there.

Conversation lagged a bit.

"Okay James," he said, perhaps eager to move on. "Well I have this form. And I'll sort it out and we'll be in touch."

I was fifty yards from the office enjoying the blessing of a wintery sun on Main Street, when I halted and exclaimed aloud: "Wimminey Whinge!"

Memory flooded back.

Some years ago bold readers the aforementioned Jackie Lynam (Peace Be Upon Her) had achieved some prominence as a feature writer in a national newspaper.

Uncharacteristically envious of her achievements no doubt, I had immediately responded on the Heelers Diaries with a light hearted assessment of her writings which were pure drek and had concluded that any failings in her style could be turned into strong points if the articles were published as a satire on modern feminism and entitled Wimminey Whinge,

Last week, standing stock still on Main Street Clondalkin, mouth agape, I knew without doubt that this was the real reason her husband had flinched when he saw my name.

They'd read my thing.

The circle is now complete as Darth Vader might say.

A sobering realisation dawned.

If the husband of Wimminey Whinge is a vengeful man, it might not be a lot of fun spending Christmas with him supervising my mail sorting skills at the post office.