Old Folks Party

The annual party for the aul ones will be in the community hall next Sunday afternoon. Mossy Brannon will be there with the Sax and Jimmy Doorley will sing a few songs. There will only be one alcoholic drink served to those attending because of the drink driving laws. Garda Magillicuddy has promised zero tolerance in the aftermath of auld Johnny ‘the dealer’ Donaldson arrested on Christmas Eve. Johnny, a pensioner from out the Back Road was paralytic and found to be in possession of enough cocaine to drive half the village stone mad and he had enough viagra tablets to stiffen every aul lad in The Village. The problem is that the pensioners have far too much feckin’money these days and they don’t know how to spend it, between cocaine and viagra they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. They’ll be worse after next January with the budget increases. Years ago they would be paying money over to priests for masses and making donations to the church. They’re spending the money on themselves now or buying expensive presents for grandchildren and showing parents up. It’s not right. Garda Magillacuddy has warned all the aul ones that he will be carrying out random searches on the door next Sunday afternoon. Sure it’s common knowledge whose bringing in the drugs, it’s that pioneer Jimmy ‘the snozzle’ Durack and him in his seventies. Sure all that fecker ever does is sit on the high stool above in Pa’s and sip his cidona.

Fr. Fiachra’s back / Erection plans scrapped

Well there was fierce craic at mass last Sunday and we are printing an unedited extract from Fr. Fiachra’s sermon which was all about his ‘dark night of the soul’ when the devil came to him in the person of his recent visitor Monica Lucey and nearly destroyed his vocation:

“I was holding onto my vocation by my finger nails, sure all my naïve eyes could see was her beauty when I met her but when she started tempting me to give in to the wicked ways of the flesh I got suspicious. I fought that temptation all night long last Saturday night suffering shocking visions of decadence and tormenting scenes of a graphic nature. I fought it with all my faith and prayed rosary after rosary while sweating profusely and, getting violently sick: all I brought up was green mushy liquidised peas, and I never eat peas. I was certain I was going to die until I saw this vision of a white longhaired man with a beard knocking down a tower made of lego. It was then I realised what it was all about. The longhaired fella was God and the lego tower is the spire I’m trying to build. Right there and then I promised faithfully to shelve my plans to build the spire and then all the torment left me. It was then I understood that even the arrival of Monica Lucey into my life had been linked to my preoccupation with financing the erection of the spire. The erection of the spire was a stupid idea of mine, foolhardy in the extreme. Reflecting back on it I now realise it was God who used the devil to get through to me.”
So there you have it, exciting stuff but I don’t know what he was doing all the fighting for sure a good blow out over a few nights is good for any man or woman. Unfortunately Monica has left the village, there would be no shortage of volunteers for her ‘temptation and torment’and maybe even a bit of punishment if she was dishing it out. Sure the only way to cure temptation is to give in to it. Isn’t it marvellous how some people get great opportunities to sin while the rest of us in rural Ireland only dream of what a sex life might be like. Oh the clergy get all the softness, always did.

Open letter from Tommy from the hill to Michael Ring T.D.,

This week, which is positive ageing week we feature an open letter from Tommy Goggins to Michael Ring T.D., on some of the issues facing pensioners in rural Ireland.

Dear Michael,
I had a letter there last week from Bobby Daly over in Thailand. He left this godforsaken place six months ago because he was crippled with rheumatism and boredom. He’s feeling younger than ever and according to him the women over there don’t have any of the aul hang-ups that they have here in the West of Ireland. His pension buys him all he needs and wants in Thailand, sure you’d just about feed yourself and have a couple of drinks on the pension here.
I have a home help from the Health Board coming around to me twice a week. She is being well paid by the health board to provide me with the services I need but in three years I never even got a decent slobbery kiss off her. Every New Year’s eve I brush me teeth, have meself well shaved and one year I took a bath before she came over on the off chance. I nearly caught me death of cold out of having that bath, I was in bed for a week after it. It wasn’t the result I was hoping for. Every New Year’s Eve she comes over and I don’t even get a hug off her. Sure its time there was proper services available to bachelors living on their own in rural Ireland. Bachelors have needs too. See Michael when you have a nice fire down and a bit of grub in your stomach you’d be ready for other things especially when you’d be feeling clean after a bath. It’s like bringing a horse to water, getting’ him in the mood for a drink and then telling him he’s not allowed to drink, sure that’s pure cruelty.
And there’s no point in telling me about the public health nurse she’s no better she doesn’t even wear a proper nurses uniform when she calls. Mary Beatrice Clancy is lively alright but she is only into middle-aged men not pensioners.
I have me hopes that you’ll be able to do something for me because of your new portfolio with responsibility for rural affairs. The more affairs we can have in rural areas Michael the better. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
All the best,
Tommy Goggins.

Tourists gone

Well they’re all gone now. Sure it was a quiet enough aul summer: there was a fair amount of excess drinkin’ done but sad to report very little in the way of debauchery or scandal. Not one local made a complete eejit out of themselves in the last three months. It’s a bad do. Sure people are gettin’ far too self-conscious. Well there’s nothing to be got from being too feckin’ miserable and careful, it’s good to have the bit of craic. Once upon a time there was plenty eejits in every village and you’d have fellas going around off their heads especially when there was a full moon. Sure all the local characters are drugged into being normal now. Even when Davy Darby threw aside the tablets last week he was still fairly sensible. There was a time he’d have gone off the head completely: even mental illness isn’t what it used to be. It’s worrying. I wouldn’t wonder but that asshole George Bush is beaming stuff at us from them satellites in space, making us all too normal. Sure who knows what the yanks would be at?
Anyway the summer was quiet and sure the weather was desperate. The Henry sisters only wore their minis for one night back in the month of May and only a handful of people saw them. Most of the lonely bachelors didn’t and were robbed of havin’ a decent bit of fantasy fodder in for the long cold damp winter ahead.
Speaking of the Henry sisters, they’ll soon be headin’ back to college and this feckin place will be even more miserable, even in their red anoraks and baggy jeans they’re a sight to behold.
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Céad míle fáilte

A big welcome to Malachy and Fidelma O Keeffe who have moved into Pateen Tom Dickie’s aul cottage up beside the bog. They’re down from Dublin on a witness protection programme. Apparently Malachy was chief witness in a big drugs trial up there recently. Pa Brophy reckons they got a big lump of money to do up Pateen Tom Dickie’s aul place. Bernard O’ Hagan is his real name but let ye not be telling strangers that because the wrong gang could find out. The last thing we want here is a shower of feckin criminals comin’ down from Dublin shootin’ up the place.
Anyway they seem like a nice family. I’m not a lover of the Dublin accent meself but sure it could be worst: they could have northern accents.

Sunday Dinner and Big Houses

Well God be with the days when we all sit around the kitchen table in the family home on Sunday afternoon and had the dinner. Sure everyone is eatin’ out on Sundays now. The gas thing is that in all them new houses they’re building their kitchens are as big as what you’d get in a small hotel; dishwashers, American fridges, aga’s, the works. How in the name of God did our grandmothers manage with an open fire and our mothers with a small gas cooker and a sink in a room the size of a postage stamp. Oh they’re big into having their own space and plenty of it these days, and sure most of them need a lot more space with the amount of food that they’re eatin’.
Feckin’ monuments, that’s what they’re building these days, monuments to their own poor view of themselves. God help them they’re more to be pitied than talked about: feckin’ eejits! Sure they spend very little time in their big houses, they spend most of the week at work and then they’re gone away most weekends.
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Ask Uncle Larry

Dear Larry,
I have been off work for the summer holidays and am dreading returning after the break. I am really fed up teaching young children. They are so silly and always doing stupid things. It is just not fair, I feel like screaming Larry. I cannot take another year of it. I am waking up at night in cold sweats, shaking and having nightmares of meeting the new junior infants class with their demonic eyes staring at me knowing that they will crack me with all their psychological torture, the screaming, the crying, the fighting, the destruction of my property, scratching my car. Last year’s class drove me crazy Larry I can’t take it anymore.
Gerry.

Dear Gerry,
Sounds like you’re in bad shape. See that’s what long holidays and a soft job can do to a man. I have no pity whatsoever for you or your likes. Some of us don’t get a holiday at all and the rest of the country has to do with four or five weeks. You have nine weeks at summer, two at Christmas, another two at Easter, mid terms, in-service days. Sure ye spend nearly half the time on holidays and a secure pensionable job at ya where you would probably have to shoot a few of the junior infants class to get sacked. Stop your whinging now like a good little ladeen and get on with it or take early retirement: you have a cheek bothering this column with your aul shite.
Larry.

Scraped through the Leavin'

Well done to Mike Fitzgerald, son of popular local couple Bridie and Mick Fitzgerald, on passing his leavin’ cert. Sure he’s the first in that family to pass it, the rest of them failed it in style. Fair play though the odds were against Mike from the start because it certainly wasn’t from Mike senior or Bridie he got the brains. But sure when all’s said and done what good is a pass in the leavin’ these days with young wans going around with eight A1’s at them, eight A1’s at them and they can hardly string two decent words of conversation together, full to the feckin’ neck with education. Sure they’ll probably end up as doctors, consultants, vets or senior civil servants: at least they’ll never need any social skills in those jobs.
Anyway Mike Fitz was out celebrating his pass in style. Fluthered, out of his mind above in Pa’s on Wednesday night, no one had the heart to ask him which university he was going to. Sure what harm is there in a few pints, it’s the drugs that are the killer.
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Bobby Daly's Leaving Do

Well there was a grand turn out for Bobby last Saturday night and there was a few women there very upset with the news he was headin’ to Thailand. Bridie Hanratty confided in Maggie McGudgen that she might have made a move on him if she knew he had ‘leavin’ in the head.’ It’s a cautionary tale, sure there’s far too many people wandering around this village in first gear like they’re waiting for a certain alignment of the planets or something to get them going. Its no rehearsal folks, let ye go for it and take the bull by the horns.

Marx: The Elephant in the Room?

Dear Larry,
Do you think is Marx still the elephant in the room?
Joey Carroll

Dear Joey,
I think I remember seeing a film about that one time but I think the elephant was in a bowl of soup or something. Apparently that Marx lad was a bit of a big awkward lout alright. The thing is Joey, elephants are afraid of mice so I’m just wondering if there was a mouse in the room also, and if there’s a mouse you can be sure there’s a trap somewhere and some cheese. And then of course what sort of a room is it and if God is everywhere then presumably he’s in the room also. But that Marx lad had no time for God. Apparently he used to say that going to mass was as good as takin’ drugs - he never went to one of Fr. Fiachra’s masses or he’d have a different story. Our local philosopher and intellectual Wally ‘the wart’ Walsh was tellin’ me that Marx was a drab enough aul character and wanted us all to live in a ‘classless society’. Well living in a place that has no class might have been good enough for him but he’s welcome to his depressing outlook.
So Paddy if he’s still hanging around in any rooms, then describing him as a big, depressing, grey, awkward lump is spot on. He wouldn’t be the partying sort and from what I hear his followers are about as exciting. They’d have a distinct tendency as Myles McPartlin puts it ‘to be lost up their own …’
Best of luck.
Larry.
You can contact The Village Notes by email at: villagenotes@eircom.net

Women and Third Level Education

Sure the cost of education is only scandalous these days and look at the amount of women that are going on to third level, sure that’s a complete waste of tax payer’s money unless they’re Lesbians. They’ll surely end up changing nappies, probably working part time and only earning enough to get their hair done, keep a second hand car on the road and buy some make up and the odd bra and knickers – sure what sort of an investment is that? At least the lads will work long hours and earn decent money to support a family. The women would be better off learning how to snare a well off man and how to cook good wholesome meals for a family. Sure all them women going off to university are only a distraction for young lads and making the lads perform poorly in exams. I don’t want to be sexy about this so I suppose if the humour still hadn’t worn off them when they have raised the family, then that would be a good time to let them off to University. There could be something in what aul Pa Moore used to say:
‘an educated woman is a curse in any household and will only lead to more rows, givin’ out and loads of money wasted on useless stuff.’
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Best Before Dates

Did you ever hear such nonsense - as if things go rotten in hours? Sure it takes days for that to happen. They just put those dates on things to sell more stuff. It’s all about turnover, and making sure the wild animals get their share of food out of every house. I can well remember going into shops and buying rashers cut off a side of bacon that had a dozen blue bottles walking on it and poor aul Malachi Brophy coming out to serve me and him pullin’ up his fly and then cuttin’ a pound of ham for me. Sure it never did me a bit of harm and the ham going them days had a good strong taste on it, not like the tasteless soft watery stuff you get these days. They have stomachs as weak as kittens nowadays, sure the least little bit of dirt they eat they get the scour and then they’re into the doctor and the doctors are throwing them bottles and capsules. It was rarely you saw a doctor in my day and if you did you knew you were fecked. Make no mistake about it every generation is getting weaker.
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Toilet Bowls Getting Blocked

Cllr., Miley Madden has called for toilet bowls to be redesigned to prevent the occurrence of blockages, speaking from the caravan out the back road he told the Village Notes:‘the outlets in them feckin’ toilet bowls going these days are far to narrow. There’s loads of people having problems with them, Big Johnny Mulcahy was telling me that he always has to bring an aul’ clothes hanger or a length of stick with him when he’s getting on the throne. It’s past time something was done.
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Interactive Famine Memorial

The council have paid €10,000 of good ratepayers money to that scrawny hoor from Galway Billy Bragg for the new monument below at the cross. We were all expecting something massive for that money. Sure what is it but a woman holding a bucket of rotten spuds. A feckin disgrace! The rotten spuds are real, that’s what makes it interactive according to the sculptor’s statement:
‘my famine piece is a visual and olfactory engagement with the famine.’
Mary Halpon from the apostolic works society is doing well out of it, she has the job of replacing the spuds with ‘fresh’ rotten spuds once a week. Martin Breheny is doing well out of it too, he’s getting a hape of money for growing spuds and then blighting them. It’s criminal but sure that’s farming today, they’re either paying people not to grow things or paying them to produce shite.
The spuds are proving to be great ammo for the lads coming home from the disco on Saturday nights. When the council heard about the lads and the rotten spud fights they said this was ‘a very welcome development’:
“what started out as primarily a visual and olfactory engagement with the famine has now become a tactile experience for the youth. Billy Bragg’s reputation as custodian of the avant garde in sculpting circles is safe.”
Did you ever hear such shite?

DAVY DARBY IS OUT

They’ve let him out. Apparently the treatment is agreeing with him now and he’s no longer a danger to himself or anyone else. They reckon if he keeps takin’ the tablets and stays off the drink he’ll be sound. He’s still going on about St. Patrick, the Blessed Virgin and Big Tom appearing above at the bridge. According to the bauld Davy, Big Tom has undergone a conversion and is warning people against country and western music sayin’ it’s the work of the devil. The Blessed Virgin is still giving out about the state of the world and sayin’ that hard times are comin’ and that the end is nigh. I don’t know why it’s always the same depressing, negative message from her, maybe she has spent too long appearing in cold and damp places. She’s always fierce pale lookin’ in the pictures and the statues anyway, she could do with a bit of sun on her back to liven her up. But I suppose it’s easy for us to be saying things like that: getting pregnant at such a young age and then ending up with that aul’ lad Joseph was bound to affect her. It was no joke in fairness. Anyway her moanin’ is gone past a joke, people are fed up of it - they must be damn glad to see the back of her upstairs when she leaves to go on tour.

Is This Tommy Tiernan's Twin?

Who is He?

Rumour has it that this man is a candidate in the general election. Does anyone know who he is?

FOR FECK sake look what they did to Bev!

Fine Girl