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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