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.