A Christmas altercation

If Blanchardstown City were the Rolls Royce of European Football, then Roy Neake was the engine. Or maybe the glove compartment. Suffice to say he was a vital cog in the machine that had purred to the European Cup Final the previous year, scoring the goal that had knocked out arch-rivals Sporting Fingal FC in the semi-finals.
They said Roy was the complete footballer, having all the attributes that a top class footballer needs, namely good vision, a full complement of legs and the ability to cram at least four clichés into every interview.
However, like every tragic hero of history, he had one fault in his character that was liable to be his undoing. In his case, it was anger. With the other six deadly sins, he held no truck. He wasn’t avaricious, although he had no idea what the word meant. Sloth he associated with a tree-hugging mammal from South America. Even lust never crossed his mind, which gave rise to the sarcastic nickname “Stud” amongst his team-mates.
But the red mist had always been his bugbear. He had missed the FAI Cup Final of 2019 when he decapitated an opponent for looking at him sideways. He had been suspended for one match by UEFA for taking a hatchet to a Romanian opponent who had been smirking at him. And even this season, a match against Tralee FC had to be abandoned when Roy kicked down a goalpost when a penalty decision didn’t go for him.
It didn’t help that the team had not been firing on all cylinders since their European exploits. Their form had slumped and manager Lee Sammy was not a happy bunny.
Not that Lee was the master of jollity at the best of times. He was a big, brooding Sligo man with a face that seemed to have been carved out of Ben Bulben itself and then gone to work on by a drunken builder with a Kango hammer.
They said the only time Lee was happy was at his recently purchased farm in Kildare. Despite his rural upbringing, he knew little about farming but had found a certain happiness whilst shearing his cows and leaving his fields fallow.
That happiness was little in evidence after Blanchardstown City’s home game against Shannonside Invincibles at the end of November. As the team trooped off dejectedly after a 2-0 defeat (Richie L, 47, and Neake, 89 (o.g)), Lee Sammy was already waiting for them in the dressing room.
“Ye bunch of useless pansies!” he yelled furiously, turning the key in the lock as the last mud-bespattered player trooped in. “Ye couldn’t get stuck in to a bowl of porridge! I’ve seen more grit and determination at the local apathetic society!”
After these sympathetic words of welcome, he then went through the team individually, singling out each player for individual censure in a hairdryer of a rant that lasted ninety minutes.
“Safe Hands” Molloy, the keeper, was like Dracula – he was afraid of crosses. Gary Byrne, the right back, had as much timing as a broken Rolex, Gary O’Brien, the left back, should apply for a monthly ticket on the 39 bus, he was that much of a passenger. And so it went on. And on.
Observers said later that Roy was not particularly singled out for special blame, despite his thunderbolt back pass to the keeper from thirty yards in the last minute of the match. However, he did not escape the manager’s ire either, with Lee accusing him of both greed and sloth, which left the midfielder scratching his head in puzzlement. His team-mates looked on aghast, as they all knew that Roy’s only sin was anger.
Roy however did not react in his normal Tasmanian-Devil way to the insults. Slowly and calmly and still wearing his football kit, he walked over to the dressing room door, unlocked it and went out. A few people who noticed him climbing into his Porsche in the car park of the Lenihan Stadium (named after Dublin 15’s most generous benefactor, Lenihan Stadium) described his face as “steely and determined” and his legs as “muddy.”
Roy drove down the back roads to Leixlip and then on to the outskirts of Celbridge. He pulled in to Lee Sammy’s farm, waved genially to Lee Sammy’s wife who was watering the chickens, and climbed on to a tractor that was conveniently parked next to an outhouse. Slamming the tractor in gear, he performed a 180 degree handbrake turn and roared forward to the nearest barn.
Lee Sammy’s wife looked on in horror as the tractor ploughed through the gable-end wall of the barn, sending newly-sheared and shivering Jersey cows running for cover. The structure came crashing down, a mass of twisted aluminium, but the tractor didn’t stop. It continued on its destructive odyssey, gathering hay bales and a rather sleepy-eyed Friesian before exiting the far end of the barn in similar fashion.
Then Roy calmly stepped down from the vehicle, surveyed the carnage with a satisfied grin, stepped back into his Porsche and drove off.
Of course, when the press got a hold of the story, news of Roy’s retribution was spread across the world, with many papers making much of Lee Sammy’s sarcastic jibe that Roy couldn’t hit a barn door with a tractor. It seemed that Roy’s days at City were not only numbered but lettered too and many fans were found disconsolately wandering around the Shopping Centre after dark bemoaning the impending transfer of their star player.
Lee Sammy however knew which side his bread was buttered on as he had once worked in O’Brien’s sandwich emporium. Though furious about the destruction of his barn, he told the Board that he would not insist on Roy’s transfer. If some sort of agreement, some sort of compensation, could be reached, Roy could remain at City.
The solicitors and agents got to work but it was a long, slow job, as they were working on an hourly wage. December came and with it the first cries of a disorientated cuckoo. Santa’s elves grumbled constantly about their hours. The gridlock around Blanchardstown Centre grew steadily worse and two emaciated bodies were found in a Corolla on the Snugborough Road junction.
But still no news of a breakthrough in “Roy-gate” as the papers unimaginatively called it. City fans were glued to Blanch TV, hoping for breaking news but none came. They feared the worst and many had already called the Joe Duffy Show to voice their despair at the situation. It was the Saipan of their generation and divided whole communities.
But at last on Christmas morning itself, the news broke. Not, as it happened, through the usual media of television or radio, but by carol singers. A compromise had been reached and the club, in recognisance of the day that was in it, sent out teams of woolly-scarved carol singers to the furthest reaches of Hansfield, Porterstown and Tyrrelstown to convey the good news to the citizens of Dublin 15.
Thus it was that many people awoke that bright and sunny morning to the sound of angelic voices proclaiming the good news outside their windows:
“One-sin Roy’ll stay with City –
Stud’ll owe Lee cattle-shed.”

The Curious Case of the Prison Conversation

“You seem agitated, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, as he battered an old violin into submission with a horse-hair bow. “Come and sit down, old friend, and tell me what is the matter.”
I withdrew my head from the gas oven and flopped down heavily into one of the Georgian armchairs that adorned Holmes’ Baker Street apartment. “I can hide nothing from you, Holmes,” I stated wearily. “My mind has been puzzling over a conversation I heard some evenings ago and I must confess, its meaning has been driving me to distraction.”
Holmes flung the wailing fiddle out of the window and began pacing up and down. Then he began pacing from side to side. “Tell me all about it,” he exclaimed patiently. “I can’t keep this pacing up forever.”
“It was the other night,” I began. “I happened to be taking my evening constitution by the walls of the prison, when suddenly a young girl started calling.”
Holmes’ ears pricked up at this. “A young girl?” he repeated. “How old? Seven or eight?”
“More like twenty, old chap,” I replied. “She was evidently calling to someone inside the prison as there was nobody else around at the time.”
“How very singular,” Holmes ejaculated.
“How so, Holmes?”
“Well… in so far as it isn’t plural,” replied my friend impatiently. “But tell me, do you manage to remember anything of what she said?”
“Why certainly, Holmes, “I answered. “I took the trouble of writing it down in my notebook just as you have advised me.” Here I withdrew a vellum notebook from my breast pocket and began to read slowly.
“Michael,” I read. “They have taken you away.”
“Surely this Michael, being in prison, would be aware of this salient fact,” snapped Holmes. “Did this girl seem simple?”
“Not at all Holmes.”
“Then proceed. Did she say anything else?”
“She called out at the top of her voice that this Michael had stolen Trevellyan’s corn so the young might see the Mourne,” I answered after consulting my notebook.
“The young? The young what?”
“She didn’t say, Holmes.”
“Hmm,” replied the detective, stroking his angled chin and pacing diagonally across the lightly furnished room. “So, by calling this out at the top of her voice, she was alerting the prison service to the fact that this Michael had indeed carried out this act of larceny?”
“It appears so, Holmes. May I continue?”
“Pray do.”
“The next thing was, she bawled out that a prison ship was lying waiting on the kay,” I continued doubtfully.
Holmes head snapped up. “On the kay?” he asked. “Are you sure you heard this conversation correctly? It wasn’t a quay by any chance, for I happen to know that at this very minute a convict vessel is lying on the quay” – he stressed the word – “waiting to sail to Botany Bee.”
“Well, okay, it may have been a quay,” I conceded ruefully.
I was about to continue when the sound of feet came scurrying up the stairs and came to a halt outside of Holmes’ apartment, to be followed by several sharp raps on the door.
“Who can that be Holmes?” I asked in bewilderment.
“A woman, aged in her mid forties. She has obviously served in India for a considerable time. She has a tattoo of Victor Hugo on her left ankle and has a fondness for Lionel Ritchie, though she prefers to keep this latter fact from the public’s gaze.”
As I gasped in astonishment, Holmes strode to the door and swung it open.
“Pizza,” said a young boy. Holmes grunted and took the two boxes, flinging the Pepperoni at me in disgust.
“Anyway, Holmes,” I continued tactfully. “This girl then proceeded to shout out that the fields of Athenry lie very low and that she and the prison inmate had evidently spent some time together watching – how did she put it? – “small free birds” flying there.”
Holmes flicked the last of his peppers into the fireplace and ruminated this information. “So, she has a interest in the topographical contours of east Galway, yet her knowledge of ornithology is somewhat vague,” he murmured. “Yet why should she be imparting this to the man inside the prison?”
“Maybe it’s a code,” I offered.
Holmes jumped up and smacked me smartly on the back, causing a bit of crust to go shooting across the room and land on the piano.
“You have it, old friend!” he announced smartly. He strode to the bookcase and pulled out an old volume called “Rugby players of Connaught.” This he proceeded to open and flick through at great pace. “Tell me, Watson,” he asked. “This young lady didn’t happen to mention a sporting personality of yesteryear that she and the young man were intimately acquainted with?”
“Good Lord, Holmes,” I gasped in wonderment. “Her very next words were “Our love was on the wing.” How could you possibly know?”
Holmes read quickly from the journal. “Lionel Edgar Mentary. Rugby player of some note in the nineties. Played for Galwegians. Went into business with a young couple after they got the franchise for Merry Green Giant sweet corn for the West of Ireland. Currently under investigation by the fraud squad.” He closed the book triumphantly. “L. E. Mentary, by dear Watson.”
I doffed my cap to the great detective, despite the fact that I wasn’t wearing one. “That’s amazing, Holmes,” I said at last. “But pray, who is Trevellyan?”
“Ah, poor Trevellyan,” said my friend wistfully. “He was the loser in all of this. He had been selling tins of sweet corn around the towns and villages west of the Shannon for years, until these three reprobates tried to muscle in on his act. Poor man. When he woke up one morning to find his warehouse broken into and his total supply of sweet corn missing, he was so distraught that he got a blockage in his – what’s the name of that canal that runs through your body?”
“Alimentary?” I ventured.
“Alimentary, my dear Watson. Come we have no time to lose. We must alert Inspector Backwall of the Yard that a consignment of sweet corn is currently being stored near the River Mourne ready to be dumped in Strangford Lough.”
“But what about the code, old chap?”
“Its only a sniffle,” replied my friend impatiently and ran out of the door.

The Stop and Go Man

A few weeks ago, that delightful company Eircom decided to spend a week or so digging a long narrow hole down one of the distributor roads in Littlepace and then filling it in again. Naturally the work entailed one man sitting in a JCB eating sandwiches, while another five sat around reading the Mirror and arguing over Mourinho.
However, sitting morosely at the head of the queue of the cars waiting for our turn to pass, I suddenly realised that it was a long, long time since I had actually seen a Stop and Go man. And, such was the length of the hole that was to be filled in, it doubled my delight when I spotted that there was actually a similarly-engaged youth at the far end and that the two, through a series of knowing looks and gestures, were working as a team to ensure neither queue grew too large.
Of course in days of yore (a large vegetable of the brassica family which has sadly fallen out of favour,) the Stop and Go man was ubiquitous, wielding his mighty sign wherever there was a blockage on the thoroughfare. Young Peter O’Loughlin, who “stopped the whole street with a wave of his hand” according to Percy French’s “Mountains of Mourne,” was obviously a Stop and Go man who chose to bring his talents across the water.
The profession was an honourable one, ranking just above zoologist and slightly below gigolo in Debrett’s annual “List of Notable Professions,” and it seemed as though the Irish had a special knack for it. While the English and the Germans frantically experimented with signs that read “Stop” on both sides and took copious notes on the ensuing gridlock, the Irish had long since perfected the system and were leading the way in freeing up the highways. The Japanese too tried to muscle in on the act, flooding the market with cheap signs which, though clearly displaying the words “Stop” and “Go,” failed to differentiate between the two in terms of colour, both sides being a hideous shade of orange and today there is a large landfill site near Ibaraki which contains ten million of these returned prototypes. Even Marcel Proust, the notable French pastry chef, found his revolutionary new sign with “Allez” on both sides fraught with difficulties and it was only after several years of pranged Renaults that he discarded it in favour of the Irish version.
It seemed as though every town and village in the land had their own Stop and Go man, just as they had a policeman, a postman and a florist. It was not an uncommon sight to see students of this great art practising out in the fields in all winds and weathers with bemused cattle, trying to perfect the roll of the hand that signalled, in the great AA quote of our times, that a contra flow was in operation.
Generally the first son inherited the family business, the second became a priest and the third went to the big seminary in Borris-in-Ossary (now the Whining Moon Chinese Restaurant) to study the art of Stop and Going. “My son, the Stop and Go man,” was a phrase uttered casually by proud mothers who used to relate to small clusters of other excited women after mass, the latest exploits of their offspring. “Working down on the N7, hundred and fifty cars an hour,” they would whisper, nodding sagely, while their audience listened in wonder.
The advent of that most hideous of Man’s creations, the Temporary Traffic Light, signalled the end. In Britain, riots ensued at picket lines as the Stop and Go Union Leaders warned that its introduction would spell the end for this honourable profession but the Lady, and it seemed, the road diggers, were not for turning and these automated monstrosities were soon adorning the tarmac wherever a hole needed to be dug. Disillusioned Stop and Go men sat morosely in Job Centres, reminiscing with shepherds and executioners about the good old days, while despairing clerks tried to find modern uses for their skills.
Their plight was beautifully summed up by Pete St.John in his sentimental ballad, “Bloody Traffic Lights:”
“And now I lie
Abed and cry
As ‘lectric lights now glow
To indicate
If cars should wait
Or if it’s safe to go.”
Of course, the Temporary Traffic Light was a godsend to the Road Digging Contractor, who did not need to pay it wages nor arrange for it to have toilet breaks but for the harassed motorist, it has merely increased the frustration inherent in modern day driving. Waiting for ages as these yellow machines dictate that it is unsafe to proceed while nothing is coming the other way, does little for the blood pressure of the driver trying to get home in time for “Deal or No Deal” and it is little wonder that contractors have returned to work in the morning to find their little red-eyed gods adorning ditches and hedgerows.
Thus I was delighted to see the renaissance of this noble art in Littlepace and spent several minutes marvelling at the almost telepathic skill of the two operators as they rolled their signs around in harmony after the briefest inclination of their heads. In fact it was with great reluctance that the incessant and frustrated beeping of horns behind me forced me to move, though on leaving the scene of the roadworks, I immediately executed a 180 degree turn to experience this personalised service from the opposite direction.
And then, only last week, I was travelling down the Clonsilla Road to return a Lionel Ritchie album that I felt was not up to his impeccably high standards, when I came across another Stop and Go man. This time, as the roadworks were considerably shorter in length, he was working solo, his head constantly moving from side to side as though watching a tennis match, as he appraised the length of the queues in either direction. A small crowd had gathered on the opposite path and they applauded him every time he swivelled the sign around, though, like a true professional, he simply bowed and continued his watchful post.
One swallow, as they say, does not make a summer, and certainly a veritable flock of swallows didn’t make any kind of summer in Ireland this year, but I couldn’t help wondering if the sighting of these two separate Stop and Go operations heralds a shift in the tide of progress.
Is the seemingly all-conquering reign of the automated machine coming to an end, with a return to manual labour? Will horses be reintroduced into the fields of Ireland while Massey Fergusons lie rusting in barns? Will comely maidens return to dancing at the crossroads? Will this column go back to being written in longhand with the numerous spelling mistakes being laboriously corrected with Tippex?
Er, probably not. But with the reintroduction of the Stop and Go man, there is a chink of light for the future of mankind. The next time you pass one of these artisans of vehicular logistics, I urge you to shout a few words of encouragement to him and maybe slip him a fiver for a pint.

The Book of Loud Lamentations

And lo, it came to pass in the fifth month of the third reign of King Bertie that a great darkness fell upon the land of Blan-chards-town. And a plague of crane fly descended upon the people and it got into their houses and it covered their asses and their oxen and their kith and kin and the people were sore afraid.
And they ran out into the street and they rent their teeth and gnashed their garments and they cried out, Lord, why hast Thou set this plague of daddylonglegs upon us?
But the Lord remained behind a cloud giggling and made no answer.
And the spider who lived in the window frame cast out his net upon the left side and he cast out his net upon the right side and soon his net was heaving with the weight of crane fly and the spider gulped.
And the sky drew dark and more and more daddylonglegs descended upon the land. And the children of Blan-chards-town had great fun removing their legs on the one side so they ran around in circles. And some children removed the legs from one daddylonglegs and stuck them onto another daddylonglegs to make the second daddylonglegs go faster.
And the Lord grew red in the face trying to suppress his laughter.
And the sun went down on the first day.
And then the great prophet Va-rad-kar spoke unto the people.
I am a doctor, he sayeth. Let me through.
This plague is all the fault of King Bertie. In his court is great wickedness and sloth and the Lord is punishing us for following the path King Bertie has shown us. For surely the jackass may lead the hyena into the wilderness and his tongue will cleave to the roof of his mouth and he may lose one tenth of his body fluid but the lamb will not lay down with the lion unless it is a very foolish lamb.
I call on the people now to give thanks and praise to the Lord and to call upon the great prophet Enda to lead you out of the darkness and banish this plague of daddylonglegs for ever. For though I am a great and powerful prophet I am not worthy even to tie the sandal of the great prophet Enda who lives in the land of Ma-yo.
But the people paid no heed to the great prophet Va-rad-kar and passed by on the other side. And the sun went down on the second day.
And the people called instead upon the wise men of the Sanhedrin who lived in a magnificent palace in the centre of Blan-chards-town where people came from all over the county to worship and pay homage. And the wise man in charge of the administration department sayeth that it was not his issue for the daddylonglegs were in the houses of the people and he told the people that it was a housing issue and the wise man in charge of the housing department sayeth that it was a matter for public lighting as the place was dark with the plague of daddylonglegs and the wise man in charge of public lighting sayeth to the people that they must contact the environment department as this kind of problem layeth under their domain and the wise man in charge of the environment department put the people onto environmental health and the wise man in charge of environmental health said he was away from his desk yea verily until the 18th but if you leave a message he would get back unto you. Yea verily.
And the sun went down on the third day and the people went to bed with daddylonglegs skimming over their faces and they woke on the morning of the fourth day to find their houses crawling with these insects and they had taken over the sitting room and the remote control and the people could not watch Strictly Coming Dancing for the daddylonglegs kept flicking onto David Attenborough.
And then the great prophet Hig-gins who had been banished unto the wilderness rode back into Blan-chards-town upon his ass and the people lined the streets and sang hosannas and laid palm leaves beneath his feet or used dandelion leaves when palm leaves could not be found.
And Hig-gins addressed the people thus.
Good citizens of Blan-chards-town. This plague of daddylonglegs is the result of selfish and wicked ways. Thou hast followed the teachings of the property developer who sitteth down at the table of the politician and shares his wine. For as the lion attacks his prey the hyena will follow and the hyena may fill his basket a hundredfold from the table of the lion. Just as the ivy cannot live without the cedar, so the property developer cannot live without the politician.
I am urging you now to cut down this vine and hunt down this lion and rid this land of the scourge of daddylonglegs.
But the people looked mystified and walked over on the other side. And the sun went down on the fourth day.
And on the fifth day the people called upon the great Brian son of Brian to save them from the plague of daddylonglegs which had now taken over the public transport system and were driving the 39 into town during off-peak hours.
And Brian son of Brian told the people that he had made representation to the holy Green Party members within the sacred cabinet upon their behalf and that the holy Green Party members had promised to look into it and report back in due course.
And the people bowed down in thanks and gave praise to Brian son of Brian, saying, He is indeed a wise and holy man.
But still the daddylonglegs kept on appearing. And the sun went down on the evening of the fifth day.
And on the sixth day the daddylonglegs had assumed control of all the light industry and service industry in Blan-chards-town, yea even the shops in the Centre and all the bottles of insect repellent mysteriously disappeared from the shelves in Atlantic Homecare. And all the plugs were removed from all the hoovers in the land and the sweeping brushes were hidden and the people blamed it on global warming and immigration and the EU and George Bush and the younger generation.
And they packed the churches in great lamentation and wailing and called upon the Lord to deliver unto them salvation from the great pestilence that lay upon the land, though some secretly said the public transport sytem was now a big improvement on Dublin Bus. But the Lord was on a pilgrimage to Fatima and had forgotten to turn his out of office on.
And the sun went down on the evening of the sixth day.
And on the morning of the seventh day the people woke from their fitful slumber to find that all the daddylonglegs had disappeared, save for the few still caught in the nets of the spider on the window frame. And they were sore puzzled and scratcheth their heads and furroweth their brows and peepeth nervously behind curtains.
And the great prophet Va-rad-kar addressed the people and claimed the credit.
And the even greater prophet Enda addressed the people and claimed the credit.
And the wise men of the Sanhedrin addressed the people and claimed the credit.
And the banished prophet Hig-gins addressed the people and claimed the credit.
And Brian son of Brian addressed the people and claimed the credit.
And the priests and pharisees addressed the people and claimed the credit.
But the people cared not and there was much drinking and carousing and revelling and barbequeuing, yea, even past the setting of the sun.

Giving blood

Probably my biggest regret in life, apart from the incident with the Swedish air-hostess and the apricot jam, is that I never gave blood sooner.
Of course, such was my lifestyle in the early years of my so-called adulthood that anyone benefitting from one of my donations would have felt more than pleasantly merry and might well have been stopped by the Gardaí as they drove home from the hospital. But once the last vestiges of adolescence had fallen off my shoulders and I became boring and flatulatory, there really was no good reason why I shouldn’t have started giving blood.
Of course, I told myself I was too busy, though I could always make time to go and see Shelbourne. I had no car and Pelican House was on the south side, but so was Harold’s Cross, where Shels played at the time. Years of wasted opportunities, I suppose, looking back.
It was only when we moved out to Dublin 15 that I started giving blood. The clinics were local and the venues were many and varied. I have donated blood in Coolmine Community School, St. Peters in Dunboyne, Castleknock Community College, Hartstown Community School and Blanchardstown IT, a veritable cornucopia of educational establishments and have admired everything from class projects on Peru, (with the emphasis on anchovy fishing,) to Confirmation portraits while waiting for my turn to lie down on the bed.
The thing that depresses me a little bit though are the questions. Have you ever had typhoid fever? Have you ever fondled a monkey from South America? Have you ever snorted cocaine? Have you ever snorted a typhoid monkey or fondled South American cocaine? It really makes me wonder what sort of exotic lifestyles some people have and puts it up to me how dull my life has been.
But that feeling disappears when you get chatting to the nurses. Blood nurses are the only category of people that are never in bad form. Even hospital nurses have their grumpy moments and nuns have been known to give the odd lash of the tongue when riled but the blood nurses are invariably, almost unnaturally pleasant. I suspect its because they do a lot of monkey fondling in their spare time and therefore feel their lives are so enriched.
The first time I gave blood, I actually had a little trouble. I lay down on the bed and the blood nurse inserted the needle. No problems. But when she opened the valves, the red liquid – I was quite pleased to see it was indeed red – merely trickled despondently into the waiting container, as though loathe to leave the safe confines of my body. “Go on, get out into the world, meet new people,” I urged it but to no avail. Was my blood donating career over as soon as it started?
“We’ll try the other arm,” said the blood nurse and lo and behold, there gushed forth a veritable waterfall of crimson liquid. After all this time, this is a phenomenon that I have never come to grips with. Surely your blood is coursing through your veins constantly, starting at your heart and performing a complete loop around your body before being reenergised back in your heart? At least, that’s what I remember from my biology classes apart from incubating frog spawn and the explicit diagrams on page 73. Your blood doesn’t say “No, I don’t think I’ll bother with the left arm – too much of a detour and the traffic can be dreadful.” The blood nurse’s explanation of “It happens,” doesn’t quite satisfy the scientific probing of my mind but there you have it. This is probably what political commentators call ‘The Arms Imbalance.’
Apparently, for I have no way of confirming it, I have Blood Type O. At first I was a little disappointed in this, having hoped for an exotic blood group that only a dozen people in the world have, thereby being put on a worldwide data base and called into action to fly to Venezuela at a moment’s notice.
However, it was patiently pointed out to me that it was far more useful to society that I had the most common blood group, as there were potentially so many more people that I could help. And also if I urgently required a transfusion myself, they wouldn’t need to disturb Jimenez in Caracas on my behalf.
The thing about giving blood though is the tremendous amount of well-being it brings you. I don’t know who said that there is no such thing as a truly unselfish act (possibly Lionel Ritchie) but the psychological benefits of giving blood must rank almost as high as the physical effects of receiving it. You’ve given up an evening of slouching in front of the telly and made a huge difference to someone’s life – maybe even saved their life. And all because you’ve made the huge sacrifice of sitting in a classroom and lying on a bed.
On about my ninth or tenth visit, I was lying on my bed in Blanchardstown IT filling my bottle (intravenously I should add) when I was approached by a blood nurse in the manner of a raincoated man recruiting for the CIA.
“Psst!” she hissed, through gritted teeth. “You ever thought of giving platelets?”
I assured her that, far from the action being at the forefront of my mind, I had no idea of what a platelet was, no idea of what one looked like and no idea that I had any to give, not having progressed much further than page 73 of my biology book.
A quick biology lesson ensued, wherein it was pointed out that platelets are an essential component of blood, along with red blood cells and white blood cells and lord knows what else. They are particularly of benefit for leukaemia patients and premature babies and, as I had a particularly high concentration of them lazily breast-stroking around my veins, I considered it somewhat selfish of me to hang on to them, when it was a matter of life and death to other people.
So now every month, I go to St. James’ Hospital and spend a very comfortable 45 minutes to an hour attached to a centrifuge, while I try and make as many words as I can from the nine letter word square in the Independent. Being strapped to a machine sounds dodgy but in reality it is extremely relaxing. You lie on a bed and can watch telly or a DVD – Quentin Tarantino movies I find are particularly apt – or simply watch the Luas glide past outside the window. Occasionally you might get a bit of tingling on your lips but that is all.
The other big thing – though possibly not such a big thing for people less egocentric than myself! – is that you get two points for every platelet donation and, as you can donate every 28 days as opposed to 90 days for blood, your tally mounts up really quickly. Together with our partners, we were all brought out for a lovely meal and presentation night in the Burlington Hotel, when we reached 50, and I am already licking my lips as my 100th donation approaches.
So perhaps monkey fondling does have a down side.

One hundred not out

The other day, an A4 sheet of paper bearing what can only be described as a royal crest was hurriedly slid beneath the door of the Community Voice offices. As the sound of yelping corgis retreated down the street, my editor picked up the paper and read it out loud.
“My husband and I,” he read, “are delighted to offer congratulations on the occasion of one’s hundredth birthday / issue / international cap (please delete as necessary) Signed E.R.”
Of course it is unlikely that we will ever discover the identity of the semi-anonymous well-wisher but her sentiments are typical of the thousands of letters and cards that have been pouring in from around the world on the occasion of the 100th issue of Community Voice.
There is something magical about the number 100 that sparks the imagination. It is like a long thin rasher with two fried eggs by the side of it. It is often referred to as a round number, though not as round as 800, which is a veritable feast of circular shapes.
For many, the newspaper is like a favourite jacket, though without the rolled up tissue and sticky sweet in the inside pocket. Together with Phoenix FM, it provides the only real source of information about what is happening in the local community and, in an age when a sense of community often comes a long way down the list of people’s priorities, this service cannot be underestimated.
Of course, it has other uses too. It is great for spreading out on the kitchen floor when the wife cuts your hair because, unlike the Northside People, it doesn’t have any staples in it. It is also great for swatting flies and wasps and even otters when they become too inquisitive and one enterprising sculptress in Porterstown takes multiple issues from her supermarket every fortnight because “they make great papier mâché” as she later told the jury.
But it is for its well-written local news coverage that the paper is held in high esteem throughout the western world, as just a sample of the well-wishing letters show.
“I always read the Community Voice from cover to cover, and sometimes the inside bits too,” writes a world-famous trapeze artist from Vaduz.
“It is full of good reading, especially the articles,” says a V. Putin from Moscow.
“It has everything a good newspaper should have – pages and writing and pictures and things,” applauds R. Murdoch from Australia.
“It is great for spreading on the kitchen floor when my wife is cutting my hair,” writes a ghost-writer for a D. Beckham from Los Angeles.
Believe it or not, the Community Voice is not the first newspaper to reach one hundred issues but it is the first one to do so without straying outside of its Dublin 15 catchment area. The Times of London may be in its 3,000th year but events in Ongar and Littlepace often do not make it into the news section, let alone the front page. Pravda, too, occasionally eschews bringing its readers up to date information on Draiocht in favour of armed conflicts, nuclear disarmament and global warming, much to the dismay of the cultural Muscovite population.
Of course we have all passed a lot of water under Clonsilla Bridge since “The Voice,” (as it is affectionately known to those who know it and view it with affection) first hit the streets many many years ago. In those days, Blanchardstown consisted of a couple of farm dwellings and several outhouses, overwritten with “Here be dragons” on the Ordnance Survey maps of the time. Horse-drawn barges traversed the territory by way of the Royal Canal on their way to exotic and far-fabled destinations like Mullingar and Longford. The Blanchardstown Centre, yet to be built, was a thick impenetrable forest inhabited by wild boar and wolves and houses made out of gingerbread.
Into this wilderness strode a man with a typewriter in one hand and a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus in the other. Fergus Lynch was that man’s name, though many people simply called him Fergus, especially members of his own family. He was determined to put Dublin 15 on the map and he did so in a size 11 Tahoma font.
He had all the attributes of a great editor – he championed the poor and downtrodden; he fought corruption wherever it reared its evil head; he refused to reproduce press releases verbatim to the public; and most importantly, boy, could he spell! Even words like “minuscule,” “marmalade” and “Tyrrelstown” wouldn’t faze him. “Show me a word I can’t spell,” he used to bark at the copy boy, “and I bet you it’s Polish. Or maybe Welsh.”
He has been courted by the rich and famous though he refuses to let power turn his head. “That’s what neck muscles are for,” he tells puzzled undergraduates. Many an aspiring and indeed established politician has felt the venom of his scathing pen if they try to hoodwink him with bluff and bluster. He has sources in every corner of Dublin 15, even the circular bits, and it is well known that he has a pair of eyes and ears in the James Connolly Memorial Hospital, which are often used for medical research.
Throughout these hundred issues, he has consistently championed the cause of the poor, especially those without much money. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” he is often heard to say, though friends admit that he is reluctant to put it to the test. “It is easier for a rich camel to enter the kingdom of heaven, than for the eye of a needle to,” is another of his cryptic sayings.
The Community Voice has become a beacon of hope for many of the oppressed and underprivileged in the world today. As they lie in their beds in Charnwood and Diswellstown, they feel comforted by the fact that there is a newspaper out there that gives them a say, gives them a voice. Let us raise a glass, preferably containing some kind of drinkable liquid, and pray that the Community Voice may continue fighting tyranny as well as bringing heartwarming good news stories to Dublin 15 for another hundred issues.

Love at the Bookshop

A few months ago, one of the very interesting morning programmes on RTE One radio had a competition to write a Mills and Boon story. The prize was the chance to meet a Mills and Boon editor who would more than likely tell you that your stuff was rubbish.
Notwithstanding this, I decided to turn my not very considerable talents to the art of writing romantic fiction and submitted the following piece, which I am sure will reduce most women to quivering wrecks. Get your hankies out, girls, you’re going to need them.

There’d been a special offer on the spaghetti hoops in Tesco and as Brad exited the store he couldn’t help thinking that the plastic bag he’d bought to carry the tin had wiped out the money he had saved in the first place. “Drat!” he said – or words to that effect – causing an elderly woman to go careering into the line of trolleys, which in turn rolled into the car park, making an oil tanker jack-knife and overturn.
Brad ignored the screams and the 200 foot plume of smoke that rose into the stratosphere like a giant mushroom cloud and marched off along the pedestrian pathway. “If Kylie had been here, she’d have warned me of that,” he thought, swinging the bag idly and accidentally shattering the plate glass of Boots window. “She always knew about bargains.”
He passed Fothergill’s. “Purveyors of fine food,” he read absent-mindedly, as he headed on towards Ladbroke’s (Purveyors of Fine Betting Slips) and Roselawn Hardware (Purveyors of Fine Bathroom Tap Washers.)
As he passed the Roselawn Bookshop, he glanced inside and stopped. Sure it looked like the same bookstore but it was under new management “for the summer months only.” Same as Kylie, he thought. Under new management.
Soon the brightly coloured shelves festooned with a vast array of novellas, poetry anthologies and paperbacks would be a gloomy shell. Dust would cover the fixtures and the floor and grinning spiders would abseil delightedly from the light bulb.
This was where he had first set eyes on Kylie, he remembered. They had both reached for the same Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat book and their eyes had met. After a short tussle, she had wrestled the book from his grasp and ran to the counter to pay. He had executed a full-length rugby tackle on her and the book flew out of her grasp. Turning round she clicked a flick-knife and held the blade at his throat and he knew in that instant that he loved her.
Her eyes were like lucent rockpools, even as far as the tiny shrimps darting here and there among the seaweed. Her cheeks were ruby red like the Manchester United home jersey from the late nineties and her full pouting lips seemed to quiver like a blancmange on a rollercoaster. As they locked in a passionate embrace, he reached down and grabbed the book and placed it on the counter with a €5 note.
All had gone well at first. He had moved into her tiny basement flat on the Clonsilla Road and had shared her bed for three months until she found out. He used to wave her goodbye as she went out to work in the evenings, selling all-night home insurance along the Quays. Idly he used to wonder why she would return home in the early hours with her hair dishevelled and her clothing in disarray. “All part of the home insurance business, sweetie,” she would say, placing her fat finger on his lips and standing on his foot.
They used to go for walks in the park and he cut their initials in the bark of a tree until the knife slipped and he lacerated her cheek. Hand in hand, they would skip through the long grass and deer excrement while up above the birds twittered in the trees annoyingly. Nothing it seemed could ever go wrong with their love. It was a match made in heaven.
It was when he came home one afternoon and found her naked beneath the local rugby team that he began to suspect something was wrong. He had believed her explanation that they were simply “looking for a shinpad” but he noticed how she crossed her fingers as she said it. Occasionally he would wake up in the night and think there was a third person in the bed until a big gruff voice assured him he was only dreaming.
Matters came to a head when he started receiving letters addressed to “Mr and Mrs Cohen.” She denied it at first, vehemently and passionately, but after five seconds, she admitted that yes, she was indeed Mr. and Mrs. Cohen.
It was like a bomb had hit him and in fact a piece of shrapnel did penetrate his right buttock. It was not the fact that she was an elderly Jewish couple – it was the fact that she had lied to him. This was what hurt him the most, apart from the shrapnel. He had always been open and honest with her about everything, except maybe the incident with the liquorice allsorts.
That was three months ago and he still found her smiling face haunting his every waking moment. Even now, as he gazed into the plate glass window of the bookshop, he fancied he saw her beautiful reflection, all gappy and gummy with a Woodbine hanging out of the corner of her mouth. In a sudden fit of rage, he drew back his fist and slammed it through the glass. “Get away from me!” he yelled as the blood spurted triumphantly from his main artery.
“Why?” said a voice behind him and he swung around to find himself staring into that familiar face with its four inch scar down the side of her nose.
For a minute, neither of them spoke, though Brad involuntarily broke into a few bars of “Dancing on the Ceiling” by Lionel Richie. Then they rushed into each others arms in a hot passionate embrace that had all the tramps in the neighbourhood coming around to warm their hands.
“Oh Brad,” she whispered, as she came up for air. “Let us never part again. Let us be always as one, entwined together in the great embrace of love.”
“Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen,” he managed to reply weakly. As the last pint of his blood splashed gaily onto the window of the boutique next door, he vaguely wondered if a second can of spaghetti hoops would have made the trip to Tesco’s worthwhile.

Well I guarantee there isn’t a dry eye, or indeed a dry pair of trousers in the house after that. The only problem is that the competition finished three months ago and I still haven’t heard anything from the judging panel. Still there’s plenty of time yet. I expect the contract’s in the post.