Come in to the parlour (and keep your wallet handy)


I had the good fortune to be one of an elite group of plastic paddies invited to attend a top secret conference on Ireland's attitudes to the Diaspora held at Dublin Castle yesterday.

The aim of the conference was to 're-invigorate the debate' and assess the indigenous attitude to those rats who deserted the sinking ship, sorry, unfortunates who were driven off the four green fields and scattered to the corners of the earth by the great calamity that was pre-Celtic Tiger Irish history. A fate which, it appears, was not entirely the fault of the Brits after all, but don't be after spreading that around now.

Organised by a grand bunch of lads and lasses from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the event marked the 5 years which have passed from the publication of a highly classified document referred to as the Task Force Report on Emigration, but you didn't hear about that from me.

The meeting was opened by Bertie's kid brother Dermot or Desmond or whatever his name is. He gives good speech, by the way. There were moments during his intro when I felt almost obliged to slip on me Bhoys replica shirt, pop my DJ mix of A Nation Once Again, Skibbereen and the Fields of Athenry onto the Ipod and have an auld jive around the room. Sadly it all went down hill from there.

The speakers included the head honcho from the bogball and stick-fighting posse, a bimbo from some business school named after an airline (the school, not the bimbo), Ian Paisley's family doctor who I think had been dipping into the Big Yin's medication, and some old journo whose book about deh diasporee is, like The Sun newspaper, still banned in Liverpool due to its defamatory attitude to Scousers.

Some of the brogues were a bit thick for my English educated ear, but I think I can pretty much can summarise the attitudes of the indigenes who spoke as follows:

1. A long time ago a lot of people had to flee Mother Ireland's shores due to poverty, starvation and a surfeit of other woes, none of which can entirely be blamed on the Saxon foe good people of England. This was a pity and a great big sad lump of a thing for all concerned.
2. On the bright side some of you did very well, especially the ones who went to Amerikay and kept the nation going with all of the postal orders you sent back.
3. Some of you didn't do very well and didn't get as far Amerikay or the post office. These wee blackgaurds and rascals went to England on the lump and spent their money on drink instead of roof tiles in Kiltimagh and we're sorry for that. Especially because these days you're always after getting on Prime Time moidering us for hand-outs for community centres, free holidays and the like.
4. Now we're a rich and prosperous modern European nation that doesn't rely the postal orders any more, we're ready to let bygones be bygones. And anyway, times have changed. Thanks to new technology like the interweb there are lots of ways other than postal orders you can give us a dig out should the need arise. And you don't even have to queue at the counter to do it.
5. You can, for example, keep buying the U2 records, even though we all know that Sir Bono is a wee sleeveen, wearing the Aran knitwear and getting the lumps of gift-packaged bogland off the eee-Bay. For the right price and in the flick of a goat's tail at Puck Fair, we can have you all jabbering away as Gaeilge, playing handball, road-bowling and the bodhran (well maybe not the last).
   
6. You can keep coming here summer after summer and letting us patronise the shite out of you and your wacky St Patrick's Day parades and Quiet Man shenanigans. And it doesn't matter a jot that you're not really Irish, because your Sterling, Euros and Dollars are as good as anyone else's.
   

A footnote in the interest of balance (and how often do you find that in satire?). The fine people at the Department of Foreign Affairs should be commended for their efforts in trying to undo the colossal bad faith of the indigenous Irish towards the diaspora for the past 85 years. Where Angels Fear says a wholehearted fair fecks to yeh lads! Especially the cute 3rd Secretary Labour.

PS Did you know that the State Apartments in Dublin Castle doesn't have toilets? It has restrooms. What does that tell you? Answers on a postcard only please.

We're on a road to nowhere

Joan Blake, Dalkey, Co Dublin, with her new all-island free travel pass, which was launched for older people North and South yesterday by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Minister for Social Affairs Séamus Brennan. (Irish Times)

Before they start exercising their franchise in the direction of Fianna Fáil, will somebody please tell the ould ones that it's a one way trip and only goes as far as somewhere like Lea's Cross.

At the end of the day, loike

In an exclusive interview with Where Angels Fear, controversial Sunderland manager Roy Keane yesterday lashed out at his chairman's latest efforts in what is widely seen as a campaign for early canonisation.

The remarks came after the Black Cats' Chairman had paid £12,000 to taxi stranded fans back to the North East after an away game in Cardiff when they were ejected from a flight at Bristol Airport for not being proper Geordies.

Quinn has since forgiven the airline in his prayers and hopes that the staff of Easyjet will not suffer in the afterlife for their actions against the loyal disciples of soon to be St Niall.

Keane recently courted controversy when he kicked off about some of his former senior team mates in the Republic of Ireland side, including the Blessed Shay Given, regarding their willingness to collect caps for friendlies and other such insignificant matches such as the group stage of the 2002 World Cup.

The self-styled Caliph of Cork has now turned his attention to what he clearly sees as his chairman's profligate charm offensive:

All credit to Niall, but just because you paid £12,000 and organised taxis for 20 minutes you think you are a superstar or something, loike. At the end of the day, there's a fine line between loyalty and stupidity, loike, and that money should have been spent on the club, loike. That's all Oi'm saying loike. Not on a few lads who think that just because they're supporters the club owes them something. Nobody knows better than me, loike, that the club is the team and the team is me, so that money could have been better spent. That's all Oi'm saying, loike.

When our reporter suggested to the traitor of Taipan that his remarks might be ill-judged, Keane responded with his characteristic steely glare followed swiftly by a head-butt. The poor girl was escorted to a waiting ambulance (we always keep one on hand when the Cork man is interviewed). Keane was hustled from the venue by his minders, Wolf and Little Fang, muttering the following words:

At the end of the day loike, nobody knows anything better than me, loike.

Sunday Tribune apologises for April Fool's Day Debacle

The editors of the Sunday Tribune have today apologised for an April Fool's prank which went disastrously wrong .

A hoax story in yesterday's Trib that reported the intention of Fine Gael to revise the lyrics of Amhrán Na bhFiann because of its Fianna Fáil bias, suffered severe bruising after falling flat on its face when it was realised that most of the paper's readership thought that Ireland's Call was in fact the nation's anthem.

A spokesperson for the crypto-unionist rag said the editors sincerely hoped that the article had not caused offence, confusion or apoplexy amongst readers and offered to replace any kedgeree spoiled as a result of reading it.

This year's existential exam topic




1) Love is more than pulling petals from a daisy. Discuss

A chorus of twirlies

My apologies to regular readers for my absence over the past day or two. I was temporarily distracted from my bloggerly duties by the arrival of a consignment of former showgirls ordered on approval from my friend Omar the Tentmaker at www.whiteslavesrus.com.

There are five in total, two blondes, two brunettes and a redhead, and I have to make my choice before returning them to the night spots, frolic pads and juke joints of darkest Macao this Sunday afternoon.

I have been criticised in some quarters for predilections which veer to the louche and certain instances, such the unpleasantness with the then Rose of Tralee at the Ferban sheepdog trials in 1987 (for which I might add no charges were ever brought), might seem to justify such animadversion.

Some cavilers amongst you might think that the importation of a gaggle of chorines simply reflects that rakish dedication to the pursuit of dissolute pleasure that has been the hallmark of my biography to date. What next, I hear you ask, a nomination for the Peter Stringfellow tiresome old roué trophy; the prized 'mullet and medallion' as it is known in the twilight world of cheesy piano bars and lap-dancing clubs?

I loudly reject such nitpicking censure and vitriol. On the contrary, the decision to purchase a former dancing girl as a mate represents the subtle wisdom that comes with advancing years and a decline in my use of certain chemical intoxicants, or perhaps the uptake of others. For the persistent naysayers amongst you allow me to guide you through the pros and cons of such a transaction.

Acquiring a lapsed danseuse as a life-partner is easier than you might think. One can obtain them readily through a 'reputable' agency such that run by my old amigo and associate Omar. He may contacted by way of the Bar Bazaare, Antwerp, although he only accepts hard currency these days. However, in the absence of such a source they may be found in the most seemingly unlikely places. Even in the respectable environs of the English Home Counties you might be surprised to find that one is rarely more than a glittery G-string's toss from a former ecdysiast. Look carefully at that college lecturer or primary school teacher for beneath the veneer of current respectability can often lie a picaresque past of sequined burlesque and bump and grind shenanigans.

On a day to day basis, these terpsichorean topsies are remarkably easy to look after. The ability to take direction is well ingrained after years of being manoeuvred around the footlights by limp-wristed choreographers of the lavender persuasion. They are used to arduous physical work, long unsociable hours and will put on a show at the drop of an abandoned barn or stable.

They love to please a crowd even if the crowd in question consists of only one person (they wouldn't be the greatest at sums, it seems) and, like kittens, can be kept amused for hours with small shiny things or anything involving peacock feathers. They also possess an almost miraculous facility to transform themselves from wasted and hungover party animals into visions of feminine loveliness with the merest flick of a powder puff and an eyeliner pencil.

Their physical abilities and presence are remarkable. Watching one walk from kitchen to dining room recalls the halcyon days of the Paris Lido when Mme Bluebell herself still ran the show with a rod of iron. The ability to touch ankle to nose from a standing start in a confined space, which it seems comes as standard, is a talent for which I have yet to find a use, but I'm sure in time its function will become clear.

In addition maintenance costs are low. Many will go for days on a few packets of Marlboro Light, a flask of strong black coffee and a supply of reasonably priced Sauvignon Blanc. Buck's Fizz or non-vintage Bolly at breakfast is always an option which seems to please.

There are some drawbacks, however. They do possess an endless supply of 'bishop and the chorus girl' non-sequiturs which will be drawn upon at any and every opportunity. This can be sometimes uncomfortable when one is taking tiffin with Monsignor Kelly (although the good Monsignor seemed quite happy at the time).

Their collective conversations about bodily matters would put pink on the cheeks of a Royal Marine drill sergeant and letting them loose in Dublin on a Friday night was somewhat reminiscent of an evening once spent on offshore leave in Murmansk with a crew of Soviet sailors just back from Arctic duty.

One should also avoid putting them in close proximity of upright poles of any kind. Such objects seem to provoke a frenzy of excitability amongst certain of them (sorry Piotr).

All of these talents, and more which my legal advisors will not permit me to discuss here, are vital necessities in the break-neck world of Where Angels Fear. I think it's clear that the defence can now rest (and after 3 days with these girls, he definitely needs it)

Thank you ladies. Very nice. Next!!!!

PS After a gruelling selection process I think my mind is finally made up. I'm going to go for the tall brunette who looks like a cross between Cleopatra and a young Elizabeth Taylor. A shipment of bullion plundered from the Tsars is on its way to your numbered account, Omar my old friend. Spend it wisely.

Shock horror, down the country people know your business

Our correspondent in the valley of the squinting windows has discovered shocking evidence of confidential medical information being available to any nosey-parker that cares to have a root through the odd filing cabinet . According to a Drogheda Independent exclusive, a confidentiality scandal has erupted at that monument to modern medical practice better known as Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.

While making a routine trip to the hospital to stroke some votes out of the sick and dying, Labour councillor Gerald Nash was mortified to discover that there was open, unsupervised access to patient files in the visiting room. The clearly perturbed politico described his distress at the discovery:

I could clearly see highly confidential patient files and I could clearly make out who they belonged to. If I was so minded, I could have decided to have a trawl through these files in an unsupervised room....Worryingly for patients and medical staff alike, there is a high risk that confidential patient files could be removed or stolen thereby resulting in the loss of a lifetime’s worth of medical history

Not being so minded our Gerry refrained from having a quick perusal of his rivals' medical data (yeah, right!) and instead absconded from the building clutching a batch of appointment forms for endoscopies, blood tests, x-rays and a range of other such services.

Queues are already forming outside the crusading councillor's constituency office following his announcement that

I can also write you a sick note for a couple of weeks or send you for physiotherapy.

Cllr Nash is expected to hold his seat comfortably at the forthcoming elections and stay well within his election campaign budget.

A unnamed spokesperson for the hospital said that the board of management was deeply concerned that the important ability to lose patients' files was no longer in the control of medical and administrative staff and said this would have important implications for the massaging of waiting lists.

In a brief statement given before waddling swiftly away from reporters , Minister of Health, Mary Harney said 'Not that fucking kip of a place again. The sooner we replace it with a state of the art private healthcare centre.....'

What if The Beatles were Irish?

Came across this guy this morning on YouTube. He's a less urbane version of Tom Lehrer but funny nonetheless I thought (if that's not damning with faint praise). Check him out.



PS Roy, if you're watching, I've got news for you. 3 of them were.

Time to kill...

I hate it when the clocks change. There are a number of reasons for this. The most important is that because I never change my bedside alarm from Irish Wintertime, until last Sunday I would have been buried in my scratcher content in the knowledge that I had another hour in the pit to prepare myself emotionally, and in other ways, to face the fresh hell that is a new day in the world of Where Angels Fear.

Instead, I find myself up and about before the under-houseboy has had time to bring me my second cup of Kenyan Peaberry and pounding the keys on the old Toshiba in the vain hope of amusing a small but select group of fellow anoraks out there on t'interweb . It won't do I tell you.

But this is a mere selfish whimsy. And here comes another one. For me, the changing of the clocks is inevitably marked by a strange sense of dissociation from reality.

For a week after the change I find myself existing in the middle of a Half Man Half Biscuit song in which almost the only conversations I hear and overhear from friends, over-familiar servants, toadies, lackeys, and old ladies at bus stops consist of moans about how the change affects them:

'Oh I feel so tired all the time'
'Oh I can't get to sleep'
'Oh I can't wake up.'
'Yes but it's worth it for the lighter evenings, the kids can play out.'
'And it's better in the morning too, not going to work in the dark'
'Oh I hate that, going out when it's dark, coming home when it's dark, you don't feel like you've had a day.'
'Oh you're so right, Alice.'

Fuck off the lot of yez. I feel like I've just flown back from Tokyo via Seattle in a single hop. Do you think I could possibly care whether the kids can play out or you can take the dog for a walk without fear of being interfered with? If you don't stop this bi-annual prattle fest, I shall unleash the awesome power of the small thermonuclear device I carry about my person at all times.

Does nobody care? It's just me, me, me all the time in this life.

Who are these people, Fine Gaelers?

While both Bertie Aherne and the management of Diageo may be selling their souls to the the great earth mother by going green, it seems the message isn't getting through to some consumers on the Emerald Isle.

Distressing news about anti-eco goings around around the bottle bank in the village of Corofin, Co Galway came my way this morning. According to that august organ, the Tuam Herald

The condition of the local bottle banks at the Dr. Duggan Hall has continued to deteriorate into what parishioners have described as a "total disgrace" and a blight on our lovely village. Their condition has been highlighted on numerous occasions and appeals made to the perpetrators both from the altar and in the Tuam Herald.

The failure of elements in the locality to cop on to the ecological message being thrummed out by everyone from Bertie downwards led to tragedy last week. Canon Oliver, the parish priest, embarrassed with what was described as 'the filth in the village' , which had recently traumatised some visiting French students, stepped out on Paddy's day to clear up some of the mess.

While salvaging some old pallets from the site for use, and I quote, 'in a Santa Claus event' he dropped one on his foot resulting in some nasty bruises to his saintly plates. The good canon was forced to pull out of the best dressed priest competition and the freestyle mass giving mosh, both of which he has won unopposed for the past 75 years. A swift visit to casualty followed and the good pastor is currently smiting his parishioners with the fear of hell and damnation on the hobble.

The bottle bank has been banished from the parish and would be eco-warriors now have to drive their SUVs to the sink-pit of Hell that is Tuam to do their re-cycling. The French students were provided with counselling before being returned to their homes in, well, France.

It's so easy being green

Excellent news in this morning's Irish Times for the eco-consconscious drinker. Diageo has gone green and signed a contract with the ESB to get all its electrickery from renewable sources.

The impact on Where Angels Fear's carbon footprint is likely to be significant and the knock-on effect on the future survival of the human race has been welcomed by eco-organisations around the globe.

Diageo has been doing a fair bit of the old green-washing in recent years, using its by-products to make compost, animal feed and nutrients for willow trees to burn in the old Aga.

Now if they could only find a way of harnessing my house-mate kranky Rae's methane output the morning after a night on the stout, the nation's energy problems would be resolved at a stroke.

A carbuncle on the bunion of Irish Architecture



From the Irish Times Letters Saturday March 24th

Madam, - I disagree with recent correspondents' criticisms of the new offices next door to City Hall in Dublin - and I say this as a former planner and city architect. The new office block is a superb piece of avant-garde architecture, sensitively handled by its architects, and it fits comfortably in with its classical neighbours. - Yours, etc,

BILL DELANEY, Castleknock Park, Dublin 15.

I don't know what drugs our Billy is on (but I'd definitely like to sample some) or whether his irony runs so deep you'd need that yoke they used for the Port Tunnel and half the population of Warsaw to dig it out. But if he thinks these two buildings fit together I can understand why he's a former city architect (or perhaps not).



















As a regular in The Oak I watched this edifice rise from its footings with enthusiastic anticipation having been promised by my mate Eamo, who works for the Corpo, that it would be an 'exciting development in the remodelling of public space on Dame St'. This, it seems, was architect speak for something that looks like a branch of Top Shop uprooted from a windswept shopping precinct in Essex.

Still, it sets Eddie Rocket's off a treat and as I stagger onto Dame St it makes me think it's Christmas every night. And in my life it usually is....

Ireland 1 Wales 0

I think this says everything one needs to know about yesterday's triumph over the mighty Welsh


I'm thinking of jacking it all in and taking up cricket, nowhere near as boring.

Make Mine a Cliché


I love my country but there are times, like most days, when I just despair. As a wise man, I think it was Twenty Major or it might have been Bock, possibly said 'it makes you wanna holler some times' (actually no, it was Gil Scott-Heron come to think of it).

There have been periods in my time here when my despondency over the state of the nation has plumbed such depths that a mere glance at the headlines would bring me out in the rash-like symptoms which are the psychosomatic accompaniment of deeply repressed rage and frustration.

To cope, I have gone weeks starting the Irish Times from the back and rarely straying beyond Crosaire, and Brendan McWilliam's weather column. Anything else would have me being drip-fed Class A pharmaceuticals in a back ward at St Ita's-on-Sea. There are only so many times in confronting the news here that you can shrug your shoulders and scream 'What the fuck else do you expect!' at passers-by on Dame Street.

This has definitely been one of those 'what the fuck else do you expect?' news weeks.

Here are just a few of the many stories that red-lined on the Where Angels Fear' melancholometer this week:

The Director of Public Prosecutions went for a nice meal with his wife and possibly a round or two of golf followed a by a mini-break in Lanzarote before public opinion in the shape of Joe Duffy, Pat Kenny and yer moaning wan from Cork on Newstalk 106, probably, forced him to appeal against the 3 year suspended sentence for rape handed down by district court mentaller Justice Paul Carney.

The dozy old beak observed that Adam Keane of Barnageeha, Daragh, Co Clare had said the rape was out of character for him and that he came from a respectable home. Oh well then, that's a comfort to his victim. Maybe he could invite her round for tea on the best delph by way of recompense.

Footnote: Ancient Brehon Law allowed for a category of marriage arising from 'sexual intercourse with an unconscious woman'. Perhaps Carney's sentence was an attempt to turn the clock back 1500 rather than merely 50 years.

Bent Galway councillor Michael Fahy refused to resign his seat on 'considered and conscientious grounds' and sought leave to appeal a jail sentence for misuse of public funds for personal property improvements. I would suggest Galway CC fund a nice cast iron lamp-post for the Fahy estate from which to string the fecker up, but with his neck he'd probably survive.

Newstalk 106 Galway vox-pop consensus: 'He's a great fellow who's done a lot of good for the community.' Ah they're as charitable as they are fucking stupid, them boggers. I can see why they let them keep the vote.

Galway water officials confirmed they all have shares in Ballygowan, Bord Gáis and the ESB as water boiling goes on apace around the county. An outbreak of the squitters in recent weeks has forced officials to resume the hunt for the cryptosporidium bacteria, them little critters on the right there, which are the presumed source of the outbreak. Thing is, these lads have known about the risk since 2005 and did shag all about it. They now claim they can't find the contaminated source.

I know it rains a lot but how many water sources are there in Galway? It's not like they have to take a microscope to every tap and spigot in the county for fuck's sake.

Meanwhile in Brussels, the European Commission is hauling the state up before the ECJ because of its failure to comply with 25 year old legislation on environmental protection. The commission has also decided to refer Ireland to the ECJ for failing to pass legislation that would give citizens the right to easily challenge the legality of public authority decisions on environmental grounds.

In the same vein, at the opening of the tribal gathering of the men with skulls on sticks, otherwise known as the Fianna Fáil Ard Fhéis, the current head man Bertie Aherne has said he was not going to be lectured to about environmental policy by parties "who think things up by the day".

Begob, Bertram, that's more time than you give it you (hesitates here for fear of accusations of plagiarism) cunt.

Murder at the (other) World Cup


Much like a game of cricket itself, the mystery surrounding the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer in his hotel room trundles on.
Except in Ireland, it would seem, the death has generated far more news interest than the competition itself.

Was he or wasn't he? Did he or didn't he? Was his killer a bad curry or a bad curry merchant? A disgruntled book-maker or an evil umpire? Unlike the man himself, this could run and run.

Theories surrounding the death have begun sprout like crab grass around the crease in April. Rumours that Woolmer was working on a book that would take the lid off corruption in the game have been shown to be unfounded. The truth is that he was working on an explanation of the LBW rule that the person in the street could understand.

In view of the 2 book deal offered to Twenty Major this week I sense an opportunity here for bloggers with aspirations to move into the literary mainstream. Why not try your hand at a classic cucumber sandwich and ladies in hats whodunnit not seen since the heady days of Agatha Christie and Margery Allyngham?

Need some inspiration? Look no further. Anything you need in the way of plot, character and cover design can be cribbed here.

The elements are simple:

The mysterious death of a top spin bowler disturbs the leather against willow serenity of an English afternoon somewhere in the home counties just before the 2nd World War.

The cast of characters:

An sprightly spinster of a certain age with a fondness for crotchet and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the poisoner's arsenal ;

A bumptious retired Colonel with a dubious military record and a string of bad debts;

An oily lascar named Aziz who seems a little too friendly with the Colonel's glamorous but brittle younger wife;

The club captain, a bluff non-nonsense Yorkshireman who prides himself on speaking as he finds and usually does;

A gauche, nouveau riche couple who made their money in trade, recently migrated to the locality from the East End, bought the freehold to the pavilion and are desperate to be accepted by the cocktails at eight set;

A moustachioed police inspector in a belted raincoat and his stout yeoman of a British bobby.

Throw in a couple of bright young things and an upper class dim-but-thick or two and Bob's your late uncle.


There now, I've laid the groundwork for you, all you have to do is step up to the crease and go to bat for Irish literature in this renascence of a classic but neglected genre.

Paisley epic unlikely to get green light; not now, not ever.

According to a snippet on BBC Radio 4 this morning, the family of Ian Paisley has given its backing to a biopic of the big yin by playwright Gary Mitchell. The Hollywood (Co Down) rumour-mill is said to be working overtime speculating who will play the great man.

The Reverend Ian is said to favour Chuck Heston for his political correctness, Alzheimer's disease and having played Moses, a figure with whom Papa Doc strongly identifies.

Liam Neeson's name has, of course, been mentioned but it's unlikely that the big gangly Fenian taig will get a look in when the casting couch is wheeled out.

John Wayne turned the part down on the grounds of being dead and Gregor Fisher refused to speculate on whether he would bring Rab C Nesbitt (left) out of mothballs to tackle such a challenging role.

Equally problematic is the question of a title. The following have been mentioned as amongst those considered

1. Paisley: Lust for Glory
2. Red Hand of Darkness
3. The Unquiet Man
4. Yes, First Minister
5. Oranges are the only fruit
6. None dare call him Antichrist
7. The Paisley's not for turning
8. Londonderry Burning
9. Codename Lisburn

but the serious betting is on Dr Paisley's personal favourite: The Last King of Ulster

Gaybo, are you watching?




One can't help but wonder what would have happened if they'd tried this here. Possibly fewer than eight deaths over the weekend.

I wouldn't recommend it for the drink driving, though. Not with the stress our mental health services are already under.


PS It seems the lads at You Tube won't let you watch this from here unless you're logged on to them. You can avoid this techno-imperialism by clicking HERE

Who's kidding who?

WG Grace pioneers bottom brutalising (1876)

From The Irish Times Letters, 21 March 2007

Madam, - I am a blue-blooded Pakistani with a lot of love of your countrymen. I lived with an Irish in New York and also had the pleasure of being another Irish's room-mate in Washington. You deserved every bit of the victory in Jamaica. You played for the love of the game and the love of your country. I would gladly have the behind of my country brutalised by the Irish any day. Perhaps this way some of your qualities can rub off them. - Yours, etc,

ISFANDYAR KHAN, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Ok, very sporting and well done that man, but I heard no reports of arse brutalising going on. No wonder RTE didn't show the highlights.

Still, he could be onto something here. The fax machine at the ICC marketing department must be buzzing.

Fianna Fáil Poster Boy Cries Foul

A potentially minor political row has broken out in South Dublin after Fianna Fáil Dublin South West TD Charlie O'Connor was asked by the waste enforcement section of South Dublin County Council to remove 400 posters from streets in Tallaght and Templeogue.

Mr O'Connor has accused the council of "persecution", claiming it failed to enforce the removal of Labour and Fine Gael posters over the past month. "I put up a few posters and suddenly they're down on me straight away."

Mr O'Connor, who should be so lucky to have anyone go down on him, even a loving spouse (See photo, right) apparently contravened the Litter Pollution Act 1997, which the council has decided to enforce strictly for a change or possibly for a laugh this year.

Political fly-posters around the city are reported to be deeply unhappy about the council's decision. A spokesperson for one company described the council's actions as 'an attack on democracy, freedom of political expression and the employment of Rumanian labour at below the minimum wage.'

And now the news in brief

Father Dougal alive and well and writing for the Jesuits

Yes, Dougal, it's called Roman because
that's where the boss lives

In the recent Jesuit AMDG Newsletter a certain Fr Paul Andrews SJ has expressed his puzzlement over the use of the word 'Roman' to describe the Catholic church. He observes

As a boy I had a spell in England - Lancashire and London. I had been born into a Catholic family, and I used be puzzled by a word that some of my parents' Protestant friends used: they spoke of "arsees". .....Now I have heard presenters on Irish media, who watch too much English TV, talking about arsees, sometimes with a wan ecumenical courtesy, and a deference to the presumed prejudices of their audience.

Well I always thought that it was called Roman because that's where head office is but clearly not. Presumably, as Fr Jack would say 'That would be an ecumenical matter.'

The 'arsee' bit is, fortunately, a little easier to understand. In the days before he became England's favourite Irishman and was still funny, Graham 'Fr Noel Hurley' Norton used to do a bit about growing up gay in Bandon (no not 'gay abandon'). He recounted how, even in those unenlightened times, the town was fortunate to have its own gay bar, where a young man keen to explore his sexuality could gain experience in the company of older men over claret and nibbles. It was known locally as the 'Altar Rail'.

Reform of maternity services announced

Health Minister Mary Harney today announced radical plans to shake up the delivery of maternity services in the Irish Republic and reduce waiting lists further. Ms Harney's announcement comes in response to news that women attending the maternity unit at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda have to wait until the start of the fifth month of pregnancy before seeing an obstetrician.

Ms Harney's plans involve the streamlining of the service to expectant mums by combining ante and post natal services across the nation. Under the plan, obstetricians will now pop in for a five minute shuftee as soon as possible after birth, 'just to make sure everything's ok' an HSE spokesperson said. Mothers will be re-assured to hear that a plentiful supply of midwives will be on hand to bring the doctor his tea, as and when it is needed.

According to the Minister

'We do not foresee any problems with this change. Isn't pregnancy the most natural thing in the world? Sure, women in Africa have been doing it for donkey's ages without medical intervention. The impact on waiting lists will be significant and enable us to target resources to areas of greater need, such as the building of hospitals for the rich.'

A spokeperson for An Bord Altranais, which represents Irish midwives, today welcomed the change and said it would have little impact on the health of Irish mothers and children;

Sure, aren't most of the pregnancies these days them immigrants looking to get a dig out from the Social Welfare. They have their own ways, more natural loike, and they wouldn't be happy with us interfering. They'd be after dropping babies at breakfast and back working in the fields by dinnertime. Anyway so, they'll all be off home to Africa as soon as the Department of Justice gets its act together.

More Mad Cow-ism at the Irish Times

In a decision described as 'further evidence of a bizarre trend' the old lady of D'Olier street has put another cow story on its front page. Unlike like the last one however, this bovine bunkum has serious implications.

Down in Wickla, where all manner of weird and wonderful things ecological have been happening for years now, Prof Harry Harrison has been refused permission to retain three new windows in his house near Killiskey, Ashford after the owner of an adjoining field objected primarily because of the possible risk to livestock.

Refusing permission in the case, the board said the three windows would "negatively impact on the amenity and agricultural use of the adjoining field" now and in the future.

This, of course, is planner speak for a failure to grease the right palms over a pint or two down at Shifty O'Shaugnessy's Wine Bar, Bistro and Post Office on a Tuesday afternoon.

Fears were also raised by undisclosed sources that the cows might treat the windows as an escape route from the unwanted attentions of a priapic Wicklow farmer and come to harm attempting to batter down the toughened glass.

It was also rumoured that, as one of the windows opened on to the dining room, the animals might be severely traumatised by the sight of one of their relatives going up in a Sunday roast. The effect on milking rates in the locality could be another Chernobyl, a unnamed spokesman said.

You lookin' at me, muthafucka?

Well there ain't nobody else here.

Local livestock expert and Bord Pleanála stalwart Paddy O' Lughnassey pointed to the cows' natural reclusiveness as a possible explanation for the objection. 'Tis a well known fact that the half-Holstein is a very private animal. She wouldn't be taking kindly now to blow-ins after knowing her business every hour of the day and night. We have a bounden duty to protect her from this sort of thing.'

Unnamed local sources reported that Professor Harrison placed a large order for stout brown envelopes with Mrs Shifty only the day after the decision was announced.

Oh no! One more step on the road to becoming a colonial power.

When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is cricket.

Douglas Hyde 1892

It was with a growing sense of disquiet that I lay in bed the other night listening to the BBC World Service as the Ireland cricket team made history by drawing with Zimbabwe. I heard smug and patronising commentators write off any chance that Ireland had of avoiding the inevitable humiliation at the hands of a 'serious' cricketing side. There is after all no place for plucky little amateurs in world class cricket. But they pulled it off and hubris was the emotion of the night.

Ok I thought, no need to panic. Ireland meet Pakistan in the next fixture and, Paddy's Day or not, reality will bite with the bone-crushing force of a great white shark on the toned thighs of an unwary swimmer. Nope. They went and done and did it, beating the Pakistanis quite convincingly by 3 wickets. A more than likely win by the West Indies over Zimbabwe will now take them into the final stages of the cricket world cup and meetings with Australia and England in the next stage of the competition.

Part of me wishes the lads in green jym-jams well, but the other part of me, the mean spirited product of an English grammar school education, hopes they crash and burn spectacularly. Bear with me on this one: We do not want cricket getting a foothold in the popular imagination on this Ireland.

My utter contempt for Rugby Union is well documented, but I have kept silent about cricket in my time here. But once I see lads in green pyjamas and pads displayed willy-nilly over the front pages of the Irish Sundays, I believe that now is the time to speak out.

My reasons are simple:

1. Contrary to popular belief cricket is not a boring game, it is merely incomprehensible to most sane people. Here are the rules:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

Not merely are the rules incomprehensible but, unlike the R game, there are no helpful referees to explain them to players and spectators as the game unfolds. Umpires take pride in their incontestable inscrutability preferring to communicate their decisions in an arcane sign language known only to certain North American Plains Indians.

The English revel in this lack of transparency and in some quarters it is regarded as a mark of cultural assimilation: if you can understand the game to their satisfaction you're well on the way to getting an invitation to the hunt ball.

2. Should the game catch on here, anyone with an English accent will be asked constantly to explain the rules to home grown fans. Explaining the off-side rule to a person of the feminine persuasion is a piece of cake by comparison. This painfully frustrating task would try the patience of a Catholic martyr and, in fact, cannot be accomplished due to the illogical nature of said rules.

On the plus side shared incomprehension might increase the bond between us and our American cousins as victims of snot-nosed English contempt.


3. Cricket has a distinctly negative effect on the Irish psyche. Look at Samuel Becket, one of only a handful of Nobel prize winners to play first class cricket. Beckett's pessimism about the human condition was acquired after a game against Northamptonshire in 1935 when he conceded 63 runs for no wicket and was never allowed bowl again. He spent the remainder of his cricketing career pondering the imponderables of existence at 3rd man, a posting well known for its ability to drive sane men over the boundary into madness.

It is widely rumoured that the entire script of Endgame was cribbed from the crowd during a particularly tedious county match between Somerset and Glamorgan in 1955, a game notable only for the deaths of 3 spectators from ennui. And every dog on the street knows that the absence of climax in Waiting for Godot is a metaphor not for life but for county cricket.


4. These days they play in pyjamas. This is fine if you're a tracker-knacker teenager from Ballymun or Dolphin's Barn for whom Dunne's nightwear is daytime de rigeur. But imagine if you started seeing this stuff sold at usurious prices in your local Champion Sports and, what is worse, folk started wearing it on a regular basis around the inns and hostelries of this fair city. Ughhhh!

5. Fans of the game think this kind of thing is trouser-wettingly hilarious:

Welcome to Worcester where you've just missed seeing
Barry Richards hitting one of Basil D'Oliveira's balls
clean out of the ground.               
- Brian Johnston, BBC Radio

The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey.
- Brian Johnston, BBC

Oo-er, Mrs Golightly, not exactly Oscar Wilde, is it? Or even Benny Hill for that matter.

6. When cricket was introduced to the Trobriand islands, according to anthropologists 'they embraced it and made it their own, transforming the game in keeping with their own ideas about village warfare, sorcery, hospitality, fair play, and spectacle'. In actual fact it became a substitute for head-hunting, wife raiding, and the routine mayhem of life in a Melanesian jungle paradise.

Thinks: A single here will get me 2 new wives, a potlatch dinner and curse my enemies for the next 3 generations

I don't even want to contemplate the consequence if we took a leaf out of them lads' book. Isn't the old stick-fighting trouble enough?

And finally,

7. Would you like these guys walking our streets singing calypso at the top of their voices, eating cake, and giving sugar-lumps to police-horses on a regular basis?


I don't think I have to answer that, do I?

Satori in New York City

It's the morning of St Patrick's Day 1995. A bright and sunny good to be alive day. Or it would be if I didn't have the hangover to end all hangovers. The result of a three day tear taking in most of the bars in the Bowery and the East Village. Finished up the night before in a drinking competition with two travellers from Kerry called Tom and Jerry or at least that's what they said their names were. Rolling Rock with John Daniels straight up and straight down the hatch. I don't know who won. I think it reached a point where victory lay only in survival. Stepped out rubber legged onto Houston St at 4 am. I remember being cold and then I remember being in bed.

Anyway so now I'm shaved and showered and shining like a new dime as I walk towards Union Square and the uptown subway. It's 10am and my head hurts but this is New York and it's St Pat's. I can stand a little pain for that. Outside McSorley's there's a queue around the block. No-neck bouncers dressed as medieval monks keep a line of already drunk teenagers from the suburbs in order. They check that the fake IDs don't insult their fake IQs. One in one out. Next.

The streets are already a mess of kelly, emerald, and all hues Johnny Cash. 40 shades, more like 400. Anything that will pass for green or shamrock-shaped will do. Beer is sucked from brown bags by boys and girls in kiss me I'm Irish t-shirts, plastic bowler hats of an eye-stabbing hue only achievable at a high cost to the ozone layer, bawneen caps, blue jeans and plaid kilts.

I keep my distance from all this viridiana. I'm in black. A leather jacket I bought off a street corner Pakistani in Alphabet City, 5 dollar raybans from Chinatown, Levis, 18 hole Dr Martens boots. Black all black. My only concession to the day is an Aran sweater I forced my arthritic ould one to knit a Christmas or two before. She was unhappy about the colour. Did I have yearnings to be a priest she asked. No ma. Black is the new black, that's all. No shamrockery for me. I look like a Russian hoodlum from Little Odessa.

The subway is crowded with New York's Bravest. Badly cut dark blue uniform suits and woollen bawneens in the now ubiquitous Kelly green. You can see Mayo and Galway and Clare in their complexions and a tinker's thirst on their faces but no beer for these boyos until after the parading's done. They're laughing and talking. For once the New York subway feels like a place you might want to spend some time.

Off the train at 42nd St. Join the mill heading towards 5th Avenue and St Patrick’s cathedral. On the pavement the crowd is already 50 deep. Blue police barriers block the ends of each block. Like McSorley's it's one in one out but this time the bouncers are NYPD blues, Hispanics and Blacks mainly. No need to ask why there are no ruddy white faces in blue today. I stroll into St Patrick’s. The lace curtain Irish are gathering for mass. There are hats and white gloves and Sunday best outfits in evidence. The church is noisy and bustling and there's a crackle of excitement even among the respectable. It’s their day to day and begod won't everyone in the city know it before nightfall.

At a side altar a black woman prostrates herself before an enormous marble crucifix. She looks like she just stepped of the streets of Port au Prince. Cotton headscarf, so white it hurts my eyes, long skirt with a Gitanes-blue and white floral pattern. She is face down, arms out-stretched mimicking the man on the cross. The skirt spreads like a discarded opera fan. The lace curtain Micks step around her with eyes averted as if her devotions shame their noisy impiety.

I leave the cathedral by a side exit and try to slip under the NYPD barriers to claim a spot in the space reserved for the VII(rish)Ps . Rumour has it that Gerry Adams will be making an appearance after he's been and shown solidarity with the ILGO protest. I have a ticket in a sweep and I'm banking on 22 arrests at this year's demo. Sod ideology this means pints.

The things some folks will do to get in a parade: ILGO irony wasted on AOH

I almost make it into the Hibernian equivalent of the Royal enclosure when I'm stopped by a short female Hispanic cop. She asks for my invitation. I pull out my passport. It's green with a big gold harp on it. Worth a try.

No dice. No invitation no way in. I've come all the way from Liverpool for this. No invitation, no way in. Ah come now, you will. No she won’t. My scouse blarney offensive fails. No invitation, no way in. She's shorter than me but she has a gun on which her hand is now resting. No invitation no way in. I back away smiling. It's a fair cop and so is she. Happy St Pat's to you anyway so, Officer Sanchez. She shakes her head slowly and smiles. Crazy Micks. I vault back the way I came. One handed. Showing off for a Latina cop. What am I like?

Eventually I hook up with my mate Mike on the corner of 52nd St. He's from Clare. He's an artist. Came to New York 3 years earlier. No plans to go back to Sixmilebridge but he's never been in town for a St Patrick's Day. Too homesick he says it makes him as in 'sick of home' and the reasons he went away. Like me he's all in black, but that’s just overalls on the NYC art scene. He does wear the tiniest of shamrock buttons in his lapel.

The 5th Avenue pavements are sardined with Celtophiliac humanity. It's impossible to move up the sidewalk and the cops won't let you onto the street. We decide to follow the parade from the cross streets. This involves more exercise than our two hangovers were prepared for. But the sights are worth it.

The marching bands and school girl majorettes are limbering up, getting ready for their part in the big day. There's a crew of hard core republicans wearing T-Shirts with slogans that would get them arrested on the other side of the Atlantic. Their accents are New Jersey and Brooklyn . Alongside them stand a contingent of cops from Garden City in dress uniform. My attention is caught by a team of Latina teenagers from Our Lady of the Roses Parochial School; bronze limbed, black haired and beautiful. Cheerleaders for a culture that isn't their own.

A group of fireman pipers entertain each other by revealing what is worn under an Irish-American's kilt. I look at Mike, he looks at me. No comment but the grin gives it all away it all. The Majorettes of Mother Cabrini’s Marching Band do stretches while New York’s Bravest look on lusting visibly. There’ll be some impure thoughts to be confessed before Easter.

Grrrrr! says Finn the fireman

In the next street a drunken Caribbean man weaves along the sidewalk in time to a Bobby O’Marley back beat. In each hand he grips a can of beer robed in the obligatory brown paper bag. Both are open and he sips from them alternately, also in time to the music in his heart. On his head is a rastaman hat in green white and gold enhanced by green phosphorescent tubes. His shirt is open and 'Kiss me I'm Iris' is scrawled in green lipstick on his exposed chest. Hello Iris. He is watched by a group of young women. They're the whitest of white and wearing whiter t-shirts and skin tight blue Levis. They're accessorised with emerald green Wonderbras worn outside the t-shirts. One of them carries a banner ;'Hello Bhoys.' Very convent Irish.

In our zig-zag, leap frog from side street to side street we stop from time to time and engage in loud and nonsensical conversations as gaeilge. ‘Cad é an focail gaeilge 'dialysis machine'?’ as we witness one more kid drunk at 11.30 am. People look at us as if we're speaking Latvian. We keep it up trying to provoke a response or at least a word or two of Irish from someone else on the streets on this very Irish day. After five minutes we move on and try it again another street corner. In an attempt at guerilla street theatre Mike asks directions to Carnegie Hall in Irish from the leader of a Republican flute band. The man looks at him blankly, scratches an Aran clad armpit and points towards a cop standing on the opposite corner. Shona lá le Padraig tu féin, a chara. We move on.

Our zig-zag progress starts to take its toll and my hangover returns like a line from a House of Pain rap tune. We look around and realise that we're the only ones not drinking or marching or both. Our frantic pace slows and then slows again. Somewhere in the mid-70s I realise that this Bloom like sojourn cannot be sustained without pints and more pints. I emerge onto 5th Avenue heading east and realise that the parade has overtaken us. The last bands are passing and it's like the final scene from State of Grace without the carnage.

Zen and the art of piping NYC

I step out into the middle of 5th Avenue and look north. I see a throng of green and orange and gold filling it its width. I hear pipes and drums pumping out Danny Boy and the Wearing of the Green. The sound echoes and rebounds off the skyscrapers in some surreal Celtic DJ mix. My peripheral vision is filled with smiling, excited faces and a 1000 shades of green. I'm at the epicentre of a Black 47 universe and I want to do the funky céilí. Awestruck for more than a moment and then suddenly I'm homesick for a land that was never my own. There's a lump in my throat and tears slowly start to fill my eyes. In my mind, I defy anyone not to be moved by this. I can embrace the bawneens and even forgive the bowler hats. My satori moment comes clothed in makey-uppy plaid and green wonderbras.

Don't worry New York City, this child of migrants gets it. And loves you all the more for it.

A smiling black cop puts his hand on my shoulder and points me east. He wears a small tricolour in his lapel. 'Time to move along now, sir.'



Could be continued if there's enough interest....

The photo of St Patrick's Cathedral above was purloined from Griotphoto

These guys do good camera. Joe-Bob says 4 stars, check 'em out

Lá le Pádraig Newsflash

In a pre-holiday crackdown intended to improve the quality of St Patrick's Day, Garda have today rounded up the following groups of people for offences under Section 35 (Amended) of the Annoying the Diaspora Act:

1. Anyone from Dublin who think its funny to don a ginger fright wig, a green bowler hat, or a kiss me I'm Irish tee-shirt just because that's what they do in New York.

2. Fuckwits from anywhere on earth who thinks its ok to wear a ginger wig, a green bowler hat, or a kiss me I'm Irish tee-shirt on the island of Ireland, period.

3. Arseholes who say to anyone who will listen 'You know, in New York they dye the beer green. They're mad the yanks, so they are.'

4. Sanctimonious bastards who feel obliged to remind you that 'it's supposed to be a religious festival, you know.'

5. Complete maggots who give up drink for Lent and then get spectacularly blitzed the day before, during and the day after St Patrick's and then immediately re-assume the high moral ground before their hangover is cold in its grave.

6. Utter gobshites who patronize Irish-American visitors by insisting that only the indigenous Irish know how Saint Pat's should be really celebrated. Unless your idea of a celebration is watching a few auld floats loaded with livestock, a pipe band led by a bedraggled wolfhound and some priests trundle by in the rain, they don't. The yanks have always done it better.

7. Irritating puss faces who challenge anyone with an English accent their right to wear the shamrock, paint their face green white and orange, or enter an informal Shane McGowan drinkalike competition for the duration of the festival.

8. Armchair republicans who think wearing a Celtic replica shirt and singing a few Wolfe Tone come all ye's demonstrates the purest love of their cultural identity. A special dispensation from this section exists for anyone who grew up under the aegis of the Prevention of Terrorism Act or the NI Special Powers legislation.

9. Traditional musicians in paid sessions who act like they're Druidic guardians of Holy Celtic culture rather than hired banjos who couldn't get a gig anywhere else and who shush loudly while some amadán destroys The Lonesome Boatman on a tin whistle.

10. Cute whoor bar owners who add a St Patrick's Day surcharge to their already over-inflated prices.

11. The same whoors who add a cover charge to pay for the dubious services of the musicians in section 9. And then pocket the difference between the charge and what they actually pay.

12. Community arts gobdaws who think Macnas is something to be emulated, rather than utterly eradicated like the street theatre plague carrier it is, and who dress under-nourished kids from Dolphins Barn up like survivors of a nuclear holocaust, smear their faces in manure and force them out half naked on to the streets in March.

13. RTE TV commentators watching the parade who say things like 'It's all got too much for someone there' Or 'Isn't that (insert minor celeb here) there? S/he looks like s/he's having a day of it.' Or 'Today's the day everyone wishes they were Irish' (usually said just after the camera picks out a black, brown or yellow face in the crowd).

14. Anyone, anywhere who calls the day in question 'St Patty's'.

15. Helpful head the balls who suggest dyeing the Liffey green, like they do in New York, having failed to notice it already is green, like 365.

16. Smug sleeveens who preface every conversation on the day with 'Did I tell you about the time I spent St Pat's in an Irish theme bar in Latvia/tagging jaguars in the Orinoco Basin/amongst the headhunting tribes of the Seepik Highlands who worship Prince Philip as a god? Boy, them boys could sup stout.'

17. Any begrudging bollocks who fails to understand that St Patrick's Day festivities are for migrants. We invented them and we own the copyright. It's the one day wherever you find yourself in the world that it's ok to be a Paddy. Except possibly in Ireland.

Have a nice time, folks, but be careful out there.