Euromillionsvision

For those of you who are interested in such things, I have turned my hand to song writing. Well, lyric writing to be precise. I noticed while watching two semifinals and the bespangled denoument of that paragon of musicality, The Eurovision Song Competition, that more than a few people were credited with the esteemed, historical record of 'co-writer of previous Eurovision entry'. Imagine that - it seems that entire teams are at work behind each of these feather and crinolene clad, attention starved, borderline sleeping-pill suicides. Setting aside the need for melody, choreography, dancing feet and a face that is at once cheaply forgettable and youthfully arresting, I felt I should concentrate my energies explicitly on setting to paper some Euro-conquering lyrics. A kind of blitzkrieg of bouncy, rhythmic and anodyne horseshit appealing to all of the impoverished former Ruskies, gypo-haters, white muzzies, techno-homos, children under five, the German piggybank, Berlusconi-voting arsegrabbers, throwbacks, throwforwards, throwups, crazy frogs, transexuals, Louis Walsh, the catatonic and insane.

So, here goes. I see this as being a sort of duet between two of Ireland's hip young finest - perhaps Paul Galvin and one of the Bertie's daughters. As seems to be the style of the times, I've titled this one with a random series of noises.
I give you Bing Bong Wacka Wacka.

Two sweet things boy
Bing Bong Wacka Wacka
You're my Kiss toy
Bing Bong Wacka Wacka

Feel my fingers like bananas
Gently remove your bandana
I wanna be your Christmas Cracka
How about you and me Bing Bong Wack Wacka?

Girl you make me
Bing Bong Wacka Wacka
Go on have a cuppa tea
Bing Bong Wacka Wacka
 
Mmmm, yum girl, you taste like a rasher
Just lie still an' I'll give you a lasher
I'm big Paul Galvin, ready to attack ya
Put your mouth in the pillow an' we'll Bing Bong Wacka Wacka

(chorus)
Ding dong boogie woogie
Hunky Dory Crisps
Cheese and Onion Tayto
way to do the twist
Bing Bong Wacka Wacka
Boogie Woogie Woo
Bing Bong Wacka Wacka
This doobie tastes like poo


So, that's it really. Anyone with any ideas for music to go with this should send me a demo tape in enough time that we can get at least one rehearsal in before the Tubs selects next year's entry on the Too Late Late Show.

Of course, if that Jed-tard duo actually win we might have to sell ourselves into slavery to pay the levies the government throw at us to fund next years competition. Unless of course the rest of Europe want to pay for it which would be an irony fittingly appropriate to the general tone of the entire camp, diamante-studded fiasco.

Nuther Bono

U2 came to visit us today at CERN, European Headquaters for Nuclear Research. They were giving a pep-talk on how to harness the potent inner forces of the atomic nucleus for the betterment of all mankind. Bono looked great wearing his yellow specs half a mile underground in his khaki-green teeshirt and squeaky, black leather pants. He and The Edge were a bit tired as they'd been up all night writing Spiderman themed show tunes and Skyping world leaders and the Pope. There was actually a moment of funny coincidence when, as Bono was going on an on about how tough it is to translate a well-established comic book masterpiece and successful cinema franchise into a bawdy, Broadway spinoff, Johann,  one of our senior experimentalists, mentioned that he had once been bitten by a radioactive spider. Bono asked him if the resulting superpowers were what got him a job at the world's most prestigious scientific research facility but then Johann showed him the stump where his hand had been amputated after the bite proved carcinogenic and there was a bit of foot shuffling and awkward silence.

So anyway, there we all were, about a dozen of the world's best scientists and engineers and Bono, The Edge and those other two backing singer guys that look like Erasure or The Pet Shop Boys and Bono was going on and on about hungry children and the power of positive thinking and dropping the debt and his friend the pope and his friend Barack Obama and his friend Oprah Winfrey and his friend Colin Farrell and his friend George Bush and the time he bought Gaybo a motorbike and the day he invented the mullet and the time he was a Northsider and the time he met Westlife, when Dr Gruman Grumbles sort of cut across him to ask The Edge his opinion on entangled gravitons. Well Bono didn't like that and although he didn't say anything outright, I could tell that he was feeling a bit put out. All of a sudden he had that that shrewdly watchful glint in his eye, like a child in a schoolyard contemplating revenge.

It happened just as The Edge was answering Dr Grumbles' question - Bono pounced with catlike speed, snatching the dark, tightly-knitted woollen hat from the Edge's head. The gasp of shock that arose from my colleagues and indeed from myself was shrilly audible in that subterranean chamber. No-one had been prepared for this.

I will admit that in my youth I had wondered at what manner of technicolour haystack or rats maze of dreadlocks might lie concealed beneath that snug-fitting little crocheted profilactic teat. What hair-crime could be so heinous as to warrant a near life-sentence of solitary confinement upon the middle-aged scalp of the mild-mannered The Edge? At best I had expected a perfectly preserved coiffe, untouched since 28th February 1983 and the release of "War", at worst, the liver-spotted pate of a balding old man. What I beheld made me gag. There, protruding from the back of The Edge's head, upon the curving rearward lobe of the skull was a grotesquely deformed yet defined and discernible, living doppelganger of Bono's face. As The Edge spun around, lunging after Bono in an attempt to retrieve his hat, this parasitic and strangely deflated looking form peered around at us all from the back of his glistening cranium.

"Ah Bono, give us back me hat y' cunt!" The Edge had an edge to his voice that was unmistakeable as the edge of humiliation and anger.

"Aaaahhhhhh The Eeeeedgggggeeee. Iiiiiiiit'ssssss coooooolllll maaaaaaan." drawled Bono, flitting just out of reach. "Let the Nuther Bono get some aaaaaiiiiirrrrr."

With that Bono tossed the hat to one of the Erasure Shop Boys, (the one called Adam I think) who in turn threw it over the Edge's double-sided head to the fourth in the group (Larry I think he said his name was). This circus side show game of piggy-in-the-middle continued, with the poor The Edge lumbering around, waving his hands vainly through the air in a pathetic struggle to regain his bonnet.

"Come on guys, Nuther Bono's going to get cold, give us me hat back!"

"Noooooo The Eeeeedddgggggeeee. Nuuuuutthhhhhherrrrr Bonoooooo's havin' a greeeaaaat tiiime." Real Bono obviously felt that he had a point to prove but for my part I was feeling increasingly nauseaous as I observed this disturbing play of cat and mouse.

Suddenly, from the midst of this childish chaos could be heard a hoarsley gurgling rasp. To my horror I realised it was the Nuther Bono, it had begun to sing.

"M luff shhh thows me lak wubber ball - woooooarrnngh, swittist thng..."

It sounded like a child trapped in a balloon full of glue.

"Shhh wnt cutsh m win aaaanngh m fall - woooooarrnngh, swittist thng..."

I began to glance frantically about the lab at my colleagues, surely this couldn't be allowed to continue.

"Ah c'mon guys, the Nuther Bono's singing now, will yiz put me hat back on him yiz fuckin pricks!"

The Edge was surely sounding angry now but real Bono was just laughing at him in that droning, vowel-laden way of his. "Aaaaahhh haaaaaaa-haaaaaaaaa-haaaaaaaa!" The other two automatons seemed to be under his spell, what kind of witchcraft was at work here? The figures collectively known as U2 were circling faster now and a strange and dreadful electricity seemed to crackle in the air. The voice of the Nuther Bono seemed shriller now, rising in pitch.

"Ahhhmmm loosssssngh yoooou..."

Slowly, carefully I began to inch my way toward the exit.

Faster the group circled, their raucous cackling, coarse and unsettling. The Edge's whining protests, Bono's breathy drone and the throaty warbling of the unnaturally hideous Nuther Bono dopplering past in an ever-quickening blur; rising in register toward some unearthly crescendo.

"Giz me hat back yiz fuckin blowjobs..."
"Aaaaaaahhhhhh Thhhheeeeee Eeeeeddgggggge...."
"Wwoooooarrnngh, swittist thng..."

I was near the door now, could reach the electronic swipe pad with my keycard.

An ethereal glow was emanating from the spinning morass as great sparks arced out and earthed themselves in everything and anything in close proximity. Suddenly, with a cold shock, one of the great blue bolts struck me right in my chest. Pierced me to my very heart. I was instantly filled with a realisation so overwhelmingly vast that I felt I might burst from the grand bigness of it all and everything. I felt all questions being answered. All riddles unravelled. I was Bono. Bono was me. We were U2. You were we too. We love you. I love wee. U2 R2 D2. "Gasp!"

And that was pretty much it. The Edge got his hat back. The Erasure Shop Bros Boys turned out to be Larry Peyton and Adam Mullins or something and we all signed a sworn statement not to reveal the existence of Nuther Bono in return for front row tickets to Spiderman the musical or another show of equal or lesser value or a pair of 'All-Cash' scratch cards and our photos taken with yer man from telly-bingo.

Oh yeah, and Bono nicked a load of CERN memorabilia on the way out which seems to have made its way on to ebay, the cheapskate dwarf!

CERN

I should have posted this ages ago, it's me with my two mentors at CERN, Dr Feoncha Fáinne and Dr Gruman Grumbles. We've been getting along famously since I arrived here to take up my new position.

Expect lots of fascinating scientific updates from now on.

Next stop the Higgs Boson!

Fever in the Aveever - Rugby Exposed

The throaty and subdued lustre of the Charlemont fans and the nasal heehaw of the Leinster masses breaks the freezing night as a light mist rises from their hot bodies to rest lazily in the yellow glare of lamplight. I am caught in this slow river, making small and awkward steps toward the looming and luminescent egg of Lansdowne Road Stadium.

I don’t really know the people I am with. My boss is out of the country and offered me the ticket. I had meant to decline the offer but the words came out wrong so now here I am, staring up into a wide and square-jawed head that booms questions at me like the great and elusive wizard of oz.

“Ore you Boggo’s friend?” the gigantic head moos at me in polished Blackrock English

“Boggo?... Oh, Mr Bogroviditch – yes, yes. He said you’d have a ticket for me.”

In hindsight I should have taken the ticket and left them to it but Mr Bogroviditch had said that these men were friends of his and would be happy to have me join them for the game and a few drinks. It seemed at first that this was the case but as we troop under the Dartline and into the stadium’s concrete bowels my total lack of material input to the constant stream of rugby banter and homophobic horseshit has effectively excluded me from the group already. We pass up an echoing stairwell and join some short and fast moving lines for heavy looking black turnstiles. I’m so taken with marvelling at the efficiency of everything that I’ve forgotten to have my ticket ready and can feel the acid glares of everyone in the tube-lit tunnel as I frantically unzip the half dozen or so pockets on my jacket in a bid to find it. A steward tugs me gently by the elbow to allow the queue to continue past me as I search. It’s in my jeans and I apologetically slip back in near the front of the queue and head for the turnstile. It’s an almost floor to ceiling affair and it’s thick iron loops look unwieldy and forbidding. I feel a little nervous of it and, not wanting to get stuck half way through a turn, I add a bit of extra forward momentum to my step to ensure I get by. I rebound from the structure with a falsetto squeal, leading the nearest steward to take my ticket with a shake of his head and wave it under a laser barcode scanner that I can’t believe I missed. I take the ticket with what I hope is an air of stern, masculine gravitas and push the turnstile but the bastard thing stops halfway around and I find myself trapped, lobster-like, in a tight and immoveable steel cage. A well dressed, middle aged man with a face like a kicked testicle who is next in the queue behind me, swipes his ticket in the scanner and with a single hand pushes both turnstile and I through a complete revolution, giving me a look of ugly contempt as I stagger out of his way. Peering about for my companions, I realise that they have gone on without me. Good riddance I think as I climb some stairs and enter a smaller tunnel. There are doors out to the stands here and I check my seat number to see which one I am to take. It’s not far along and passing through it I find my seat quickly enough as the stands have yet to fill up. I don’t see any of Mister Bogroviditch’s friends though and find myself double and triple checking my seat number to be sure I’m in the right place as he said that they always get seats together. I look around me but can see no sign of them but find plenty to admire in this floodlit pantheon. I let my eyes rove over the high tiers of the terraces where tiny figures wend their way, in interrupted streams, through the miniature, colour-cordoned seating. I imagine that I am a giant and begin to squish these distant people between my outstretched thumb and forefinger. “Squish...splat...kapow...splotch...” I only realise how carried away I have become with this when I notice two grown men in the row of seats ahead of me scowling in my direction. Slowly I lower my hand and look away. I hear one of them mutter “Fockin’ queer!” as I do so. The cold is beginning to bite so I zip my jacket up tight and sit on my hands for warmth. The seats behind me and to my left fill up and then also, to my surprise, the seats to my right and no still no sign of Mister Bogroviditch’s friends. I silently hope that I am in the right place as I would not wish to have to try and find another seat now that masses are in. As I look around, taking in the backs of heads and general jostling throng of Leinster fans now surrounding me it strikes me that, though not of insignificant stature myself, I appear to be positively petite in proportion to the bear-like men who have filled the stadium. It is then that I turn to fully take in the hulking presence that casts a shadow of physicality at my left shoulder. I look up and up again and am greeted by two beetle-black eyes that nestle snug between doughy cheeks, pinked by the cold and a great, glistening forehead that curves gently up and away beneath a baby-like, strawberry-blonde fuzz. This towering curiosity honks at me good naturedly in a tongue that seems at once both familiar and alien and even as he turns away I am held transfixed. I observe with growing fascination his movements which appear focused but poorly co-ordinated as if not yet fully learned or perfected. For a moment he stoops, fumbling at something upon the ground and I am about to offer assistance when he comes up clutching a flag in the navy and yellow of Leinster. Furiously he begins to wave it, a great gaping grin cracking his ruddy countenance and indeed his high-spirited thrashings are so violent that I am almost knocked from my feet and have to press a little to my right to avoid injury. He looks so happy this oversized man-child clutching his little flag in a fist of fat sausages.

A roar goes up and my eyes scan the pitch and see the teams emerging from the dressing rooms. The man-baby is clearly delighted as he begins to honk his untelligible jibber-jabber in a voice so deep I fear for a moment that it may loosen my bowels.

“Moooaaahhh! Hoozahhhh!” he bawls and I find myself scrutinising the sounds for some familiar term.
“BlawkAwk Boyzzzz....Ruggerrrr!” it’s no use, I mark him down as a hopeless imbecile and hope that he does not try to befriend me at half time.

The entire stadium is on their feet cheering and stomping as the Leinster boys do some stretching and hugging and, feeling a little carried away by the general excitement, I lend my support with a little round of applause. As I watch the bristling crowds and the bright nova of camera flashes firing around the stands I begin to sense some of the euphoria that electrifies this colosseum. In no time at all the match is underway and the crowd buck and rear in breaking waves that mirror the flow of play before them. Leinster pile the pressure on, ducking and weaving and dodging and running and lying on the ground and jumping up, getting in a muddle and rolling clear until suddenly, to  tumultuous celebration, a try. The stadium erupts as one voice into animal roars of satisfaction.

As I settle back into my seat after the successfully kicked conversion I hear a voice drawl knowingly behind me.
“The noxt fofteen monutes now ore crotical! Absolutely crotical!”
It is then that the chanting starts.
“Leeeennnnnnssstur.... Leeennnnnnssstur....” I wince in pain at the decibel level.
“Leeeennnnnnnssstur...” It is the idiot man-baby, his contorted voice so deeply-rooted in a low-bass register that it falls upon me like a mountain.
“Leeeennnnnnnnssstur...” I can actually feel my left eardrum compressing so deeply that it appears to be poking me in the brain.
“Leeeeennnnsssstur....” Realise that I must act or go deaf I pull a glove off with my teeth and screw its index finger deep into my lughole. This seems to attenuate his mindless braying to the level of mere irritation so I pull up my hood to hide the fact that I have a fleece lined glove protruding from the side of my head and try to concentrate on the game as play is resumed.

The frantically paced play upon the pitch draws continued howls of approval from the home crowd and it is easy to feel buoyed upon the fervour, like a cork on the ocean, as one’s temperament tunes itself to the prevailing vibrations. I wonder if this growing sense of reckless abandon that swells within me is what causes women to synchronise their menstrual cycles when living communally – they must love the ecstatic charge of it! I am caught on the wave now, howling my delight, roaring for more, lending my own cry of “Heave” as the scrums engage with a crunch.

But something is wrong, the vibrations are changing. I don’t know if I feel it first as a tremor through the souls of my feet or simply register a change in the pitch of the mob but my hair begins to tingle and my breath catch even before I see the leviathan form that has appeared between the vaulted heavens and us below. The entire stadium shudders and groans as the monster braces its weight against the steel canopy overhead before swinging its colossal legs into the centre of the playing field. I am transfixed but even as my instinct to fly asserts itself a new horror steals over me, holding me back, a chant has been taken up and is steadily building throughout the arena.
“Wonga-Wonga, Wonga-Wonga, Wonga-Wonga, Wonga-Wonga...”
It is dawning on me now, the full and awesome gravity of what is taking place. It is Wonga-Wonga, the gargantuan, testosterone beast from whose gut spring the driving winds of all that is wicked and wrong in the world. Have the fates conspired in order that I bear witness to this most heinous incarnation of man’s baseness, the sentient totem of egotistical pride and self-indulgence?
“Wonga-Wonga, Wonga-Wonga, Wonga-Wonga...” all around me now, the chanting continues as out upon the pitch, with terrible footfalls that shake the very earth, Wonga-Wonga positions himself in an awkward, squatting-crouch and I wonder for a moment  if he is about to leap skyward, then suddenly the chanting stops. I am holding my breath and cannot take my eyes from the monster, whose unfathomably immense, curving posterior is suspended in the air a mere 30 metres above and ahead of me. The very air quivers with silent expectation as something both terrible and amazing is surely about to unfold. My eyes rove over the dimpled, greyish-pink surface of the behemoth’s hide, taking in the powerful majesty of its perfect musculature, straining against the strength of its flesh but even as I marvel a great surge of energy seems to course through the creature’s enormous frame and, Oh Jesus No! Around me the crowd are upon their feet, their cacophonous screaming positively ear-rending in volume as from the monster’s shaking hind-quarters tumbles great, bus-sized dollops of deep-chocolate-brown faecal matter. This office-block sized animal is taking the biggest crap I have ever seen right in the middle of Aviva Stadium and the people thronging the stadium are going insane with delight. Suddenly and as one the rush begins. To my horror the crowd on all sides is pouring forward, actually running headlong over the plastic bucket seats toward the still falling tree-trunks of steaming hot shite. In a trance of utter amazement it is a second or two before I realise the danger and my panic rises as I realise that I too am being swept toward the great pile of poopoo and it is most surely poopoo for even as they charge, recklessly focused upon the smoking brown hillock, the longing cries of “Poopoo” issue forth from every mouth. I am fighting now, like a noble and terrified salmon, against the buffeting flow of bodies but I am borne up again and cast backward into the vaporous fug and stench that is rolling outward from the filthy pile. Closer – I am striking out with all my force in a bid to escape the crush. Closer – glancing over my shoulder I can see those who have reached the dung heap casting themselves gleefully into its hot and viscous folds. Closer – I can see bodies plunging from the higher reaches of the terraces, a maddened cascade of zealotry. Closer – I am gouging, and clawing and screaming for mercy but I see the eyes of those who drive me before them widen with delighted anticipation and then, with a soft, liquid ‘Plop’ I am engulfed.

The womb-like warmth envelopes me in a soft caress and I am forced deeper inside by the tide of people behind me. My panic seems to have evaporated as the claustrophobic, roaring crush of the outside is replaced by a heady weightlessness and a calming depletion of the senses. I am aware now of only one need. I must feast. A ravenous and driving hunger is building in me and the initial euphoria is giving way to a primeval urge to take and to consume. I begin to gorge myself on the matter about me, forcing great fistfuls down my gullet. Another body bumps against me and snarling I cast them aside and continue to eat. It is animal, this feeling, this instinctive need to possess all I can lay hands upon. I guzzle more intensely, fighting hard now with any whom encroach on my perceived territory. Light begins to pierce the great, fetid mound as its great mass is consumed. Beneath the towering floodlights we must appear as maggots writhing in this filth but still we feast. We devour and lick and gnaw until nothing - quite literally, nothing - remains of the huge mound of poopoo. Not even the stiff blades of grass carry a trace of it as tongues have cleaned them in their entirety. Standing tall now beneath the harsh glare of electric light I realise that Wonga-Wonga has departed and no earthly sign of him remains. Inside however I feel a new force in my heartbeat, a new and unknown power within me. I join those around me in issuing a guttural and triumphant howl of confidence, of arrogance, of strength. I know now what it means to become a captain of industry, a leader of men groomed for wealth and success. It courses through me now, the knowledge and the poopoo.

In the Mouth of Madness

Marty 'The Shitpeddler' Whelan

The black tarmac lolls like a tongue through the dun coloured winter hawthorn and shitberry hedgerows. There's nothing like a snowmelt to make the countryside look secondhand. The car bucks upon the puckered and broken, frost-harried road surface like a spastic pig in electro-shock treatment. The hiss of static competes with the gristled snarling of my nissan cherry's prehistoric diesel engine. It's the best kind of radio these days. A tonic for the wounded pride and shattered dreams of Ireland's most feckless underachievers. I used to listen to Morning Ireland and then Drivetime in the evenings until it all became too horribly real to handle. The sudden realisation that I was only listening to them out of a snobbish sense of my own self-importance. Feeling that I could somehow better myself by listening to the torpid recounting of figures and facts - statisticians' reports read down the airwaves by the insipid, the craven and the dead - but I lost my nerve. I hadn't the steel of real men, able to take the hard news on the chin and get on with their day. I was a broadsheet tourist, buying the Irish Times for nothing more than the fleeting looks of acceptance it gained me from the men in suits who might flank me in checkout queues. Soon I was budgeting my meagre and dwindling salary so that I could afford even just the weekend edition and at that I would only read the food section and the TV guide. Finally I had to bite the bullet and drop the pretence. It was time to try something new. It was a rainy evening at Newlands Cross about six weeks ago when I rolled the car window down and asked the handsomely dark-skinned young man at the traffic lights for a copy of the Evening Herald. I felt the panicked palpitations of the transgressor as I wound the window back against the wind, the drizzle and the fumes. An excited shame at what had just passed and at what was to come. I pulled into a layby off the M11 to pore over the luridly coloured and conveniently-sized pages. I read quickly through the short passages upon the front page. Headlines that dominated half the sheet, stories that seemed to go nowhere and come back without souveniers. The punchy writing style, the inane subject matter, the total lack of cohesion and impartiality seemed to buzz in my head, rising like static within my ears until the noise of it drowned out any possibility of comprehension. My vision began to swim and I realised that I had come too far down the road of self-improvement and empowerment to forray so lightly into the torrid world of the sleazy rags. I burned the paper by the roadside and drove away at speed. Over the following days I tried other 'Redtops' in my quest for a new information media but the results of these experiments were even more harrowing. The News of the World and The Sun rendering me catatonic and in a state of such supressed conciousness that in both cases I was only roused when the neighbour's cat crept through a window and began to chew on my lips.

It was then that I began to experiment with radio and the true horrors of what I was facing arose to confront me. As the radio needle drifted across the bandwidths, new voices filtered in through the low, white noise. Raised voices, pitched into upper registers like excited children full of fanta and skittles. The Tweedle Dumm and Dee of Colm and Jim-Jim, conjoined twins trapped inside a helium balloon and fed E-Numbers and misinformation through a reconditioned umbilical cord donated by Sinéad O'Connor. Shuddering I pressed the needle onward. The one calling himself John Murray drifted out of the haze. He appeared to be reading jokes from the script of a cancelled pantomime, laughing at his own formidable guile. There is the one they call 'The Plank', who mixes a sickly elixir of current affairs and self-important old farts, a complex array of pulleys and trapdoors creaking away in the background, giving him the appearance of sentience as a ventriloquist reads carefully written questions taken from envelopes in a sequence predetermined by a team of numerologist druids. From here the octave leaps as some unintelligible gobshite from Navan moos his excitement all over the microphone like a bull at a gloryhole by a shed full of cows. "That's class!" he lows, his mouth full of cud. 'Class'? There's no class here - onward then! But it keeps on coming, more adolescent squeals of giddy, hand-clapping mirth. Mannequins given voice by some black-devil-witchery. "Accept me!" their cries plead from the radio. "Tell me I am loved. That I belong. That you count me as a friend!" These are the twittering, flapping boys that you remember from school. The one's for whom you saw only a future of latent homosexuality and a flamboyantly-conservative sartorial dichotomy. An idiot's parade, out of kilter with the mood of the nation. Their rising shrieks of empty mirth and endlessly circling chatter begins to overwhelm me. The steering wheel feels fat and heavy in my hands - it's another attack. Frantically I spin the dial but to no avail. It is Tubs! When I thought it could get no worse this man-child comes over the airwaves, his inflections veering more violently than my car as I struggle to stay in control. This mindless fucker is actually reading articles from a tabloid newspaper in a full-frontal attack upon my sensibilities. The hedgerows close in, the world goes soft and everything is darkness.

As I sleep I dream. I dream of a radio station where the presenter understands me and all of those like me. He arrives in the studio, turns on nought but a small table lamp and, by its subdued light, sighs into the microphone. He sighs for a country on the ropes. He sighs for the jobless and those working for a pittance. He sighs for all of the lies and deceit and for the loss of control. And his sigh lights a torch inside of us, for we know that we are no longer alone.

I awake to the harshness of disinfectant and whitewash and an ache down the length of my body. I can hear an argument, tinny and indistinct. I allow my ears to adjust to its frequency and realise that the bickering comes from a nearby radioset. A taxi driver and a menopausal housewife are going for it like two cats in a bag. I wish that someone would drop some bricks on it. Suddenly a deep, steady masculine voice, like a ship captain steadying all hands, cuts across them appealing for calm and then he sighs. It breaks over me like a soothing river, raising me afloat. Who is this creature, this Joe Duffy? This must be a special radio programme made by angels to play to the dead. I feel it may guide me to the home of my heart at last. But wait, what is this? He's calling for an ad-break. And then it happens. Marty Fucking Whelan, that miserable prostitute of the airwaves bringing vacuous, nauseating joviality to bear on tea brack and fucking cut-price crumpets from Tesco. The spell is broken, I'm not in heaven, I'm in MRSA central, Dublin 8, in a full body cast and without the physical wherewithall to beat the solid-state guts out of the bloody wireless with a gigantic fucking hammer.

After months of pain and intense physical rehabilitation I am back on the road with the radio tuned to static and the lithium pills in the glove box. Sometimes, if I double dose, I can hear the sigh again. The sigh of universal understanding.

Pissup

“Lenihan y’bastard, come up with them purse strings, McCreevy never presided over such penury!”

Up comes Lenihan, chest puffed out like a pigeon, head puffed out like a Rice Krispie, eyes puffed and popped for want of more hot air.

“Come up Purse and let’s take stock.”

“Is Chucky comin’ Boss?” the airless eyes searchlight the room from their fleshy guard tower.

“Never my sweet, you won’t be upstaged tonight. Let the Belgians have and keep him and his sliteyed blueblack leer. Come up now.”

A mill a mull as the hall gets full with pinstripe, silks and tight knit wool.

“It’s avant garde new guard tonight Purse, great Aurthur’s seat’ll ring bright and solid and true. Listen! Lend your sow’s ear to that roar – there’ll be a session tonight as the rafters ring.”

“Bright and solid and true Boss!”

Elevated by the dais, the dumplings are asconce, an island for now amid the flow. Proud patriarchs, they watch from on high over high cheeks of high colour as about them the crush of tongue and flesh and hand in hand back slaps and bubbles with “Ah jakers howya!”

“Where are my Marys Purse, are they in yet? There’s order of pleasure to be discussed”

“I see them Boss.” The Purse flails a fist of sausages through the air, one of them hot-dogging, stabbing, making direction. The head dumpling sights along it with a gunner’s eye and grunts – they are in.

“Marymarymarymary, your bewitching, bow-legged feminine delicacy is well turned out this evening. Lead the way Coughlan, moonfaced and misunderstood, don’t fret, we’ll keep you warm and close tonight. Harney, the arse of the hydra, keep the conga line together you lapsed democrat.”

Up come the Marys, a quadrinity of duplicity – Coughlan, O’Rourke, Hanafin, Harney - up dance to the dais – clunk rattle shuffle stomp heel toe and thrust.

“Marys!” the Boss is crying with alarm “you’ll be rubbed red with exertion before it’s begun – Purse, call us to order.”

The Purse blows a coded whistle and makes the secret salute and a low soldier’s hush falls over the vaulted throng.

“Summon Carey and seal the doors.”

To a hollow drumbeat the slavering whip is presented by chain to his master’s fist. Lolling tongue and pigslit eyes flash through the dark leather hood whilst in his crotch an enormous erection burns beneath the taut thong of animal hide. A yelp and a snarl as the chain is tugged and a press as the crowd makes a hole.

“Easy boy.” The Boss coos and the whip settles down to worry his flesh.

Gather in, gather in let us shortly begin.” The Boss chortles the rhyme in his throat. And wavelets of sound lap the edge of the stage, hush soft of the hall gently breathing.

A great hock and a snort, a scowl and a smile as the Boss clears his ducts like a sewer for a song.

“Ah by winding red brick and bubbling black cobbles

We cumann tonight ‘neath old James’ Gate

And the Blueshirts have promised us pairs for tomorree

So’s we can louse and carouse and drink until late.”

Black ohs stretch pink and upturned faces, like toothed donuts they  roar and cheer. Then the Boss double clap like an old governess and great barrels are braced and tipped and tapped and as cries crescendo the very air bucks for nuts and nachos and sin-black stout, so the band strikes a devil dervish loose- whirligig wheeling away we go.

Isteach dó trí, knees and toes. Céilí lines crash and smash and amach. Dó trí a haon dó trí isteach dó trí, ears and nose and lusca.

Upon the stage the Boss has the Dev suit on and does a loose-limbed yankee barnhouse jig. All those that pass giggle and genuflect before an old man’s zombie skin, pallid and patriotic green and stretched like powdered latex over the Boss’s swollen, stomping form.

Clip clop clumpedy, clip clop clump – heavy hooves in shining leather while his elbows seesaw up the air and all the time poor Dev’s dead face, surprised and stretched, a banjaxed banjo, pince nez lopsided upon misshapen shades of a resurrected nose – clip clop, clip clop, clippedy clump. A sudden Tullamore roar, thick with smoke and stout, comes pouring from between the dead man’s lips and Dev’s desiccated parchment can take no more, bursting and tearing and falling asunder, drifting dandruff confetti down to the floor.

A whooping, laughing, tumultuous throng cheers and jeers and the band double-time. Wool-suited Marys, conga line chasing pulling in all but the Greens who skitter and yelp. Tweeded huddle of pumpkins guffaw in the corner swearing mad blind for Kirry “And sure ain’t she mighty!” Back-slapping boys, talk in the air, nod-nodding women and everyone “yes!” While the Boss and the Purse beam down on their kinsmen, grey muscles beating lies in their chests.

“How we lookin’ Purse? What news from the reserve?”

The Purse paws at his brocaded bag and loosening strings dips down inside and when up he comes fingers they turn a traitor’s farthing in the bleary eye air.

“The decision maker Boss, it’s all that’s left!”

With one rolling eye in the side of his great head the Boss fixes the heavy copper with a wary stare, the flips in the light – embossed harp, the queen’s head, embossed harp, the queen’s head – “Put that devil disc away Purse, decisions are later, tonight’s for the feckless, flathulach and free.”

Palming the coin out of sight, the Purse roundeyes the throbbing hall

“But Boss, the reserves, there’s none of it left!”

Like a cat at his elbow and up in his ear, the Boss pinches and hisses keep it down keepitdown.

A wave to the room “Look all about, the reserves are in porter and whisky and stout.” And then with a lash of his tourniquet tongue he’s whip-crack away “Purse, there’s whorin’ to be done!”

Like steam from a field that’s been over with cows, the hall fugs heavy and thick, as congas and céilís slow their ripples of motion in the dull press of drunkards, hotheads and thieves. The waves ease to a ripple, the surges, a sway, hangdog and haggard, all top buttons open and tails all untucked. Crumple crease, balled up jackets, discarded sashes, scarves and ties and rip ruptured seams. A voice hoarse as gunfire  it bursts, it’s the Boss, Marys on each arm and two at his wings. Wallowing sea anchors against undulation he staggers and sways and bawls out a song and then to the Purse with head back satisfaction “Look around you comrade, we proved them all wrong!”

Shaking off Marys like a bird of wet plumage “Get on now you harpies and leave us alone.” A hand of pride and infinite solace clamps hard on the shoulder of his first aide de camp “What’s botherin’ ya Purse, are we not pissed up to ninety? Sure the brewery’s empty, we’ve drinked it all dry!”

And the Purse in his trembling pork sausage fingers draws up again the copper of fate.

“It’s all we have left Boss – the emergency shilling, the coin that gets tossed when all hope is lost!”

But the Boss, never shaken, fits all in his stride, his shambling shoulder-hunched head-turning gait.

“Hope’s never lost Purse, only misplaced and ladykillers like us scare chance half to death.”

And closing a fist around the flat copper disc, he thumbs and then flips it head over harp.

“Decisions, decisions, he who hesitates loses. Heads it’s the early-house, tails we’re to bed!”

ScamSpam

This morning I received this. I was in a facilitating kind of humour and felt that I could offer the gentleman some assistance, albeit of the insincere and potentially damaging kind.

 

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