It's the old people you'd feel sorry for. There they were thinking that Willie Bermingham had got himself a whole new crew of volunteers. Twice in seven months - old people who haven't had a knock on the door since 1977 and last year they were up and down to the door like yo-yes, people standing there with big smiles and askk-ing is there anything you'd like, missus.
It's been a nightmare. I could put a gloss on things and say that the Spontaneous Aggravation Party has been working like a well-oiled machine, that our people are getting an enthuusiastic response from the constituenncies, that if one interprets the variious polls accurately it ts obvious-that there is a massive swing to our point of view. The usual crap.
Oh, goody! We get to go through all that again. Gee whizz, terrific. Me, I'd made extensive preparations for the budget. Cartons of smokes, a bottle of this, a bottle of that. Heard a rumour that newspaper prices were inncreasing so I began hoarding a stock of the Irish Times. Time for one last night with the elbows down in O'Donoghues before they start taxing barstools.
When the evening started the whiskey shelf was groaning. Now it was purring contentedly and I was purring back at it - always glad to help relieve a burden.
And so this is Christmas. And what have we done? Another year over, a new one ... "
Nice way to start a Christmas column - or so I thought when I wrote that one December day last year. And woke up next morning, rollled over, switched on the radio and 'heard Ronan Collins talking about something bad that had happened in New York City. After that it didn't seem the thing to do to mess about with John Lennon's Xmas song.
Saturday night, chewing the cud with Studs life, love, destiny, ambition, the vagaries of the human heart, that kind of thing — small talk. Nine o'clock comes round and she heads off to the night shift and I'm on my own and trying to figure some thing to pass the time. Long winter evenings, you can have them. By Gene Kerrigan
Saturday night, chewing the cud with Studs life, love, destiny, ambition, the vagaries of the human heart, that kind of thing — small talk. Nine o'clock comes round and she heads off to the night shift and I'm on my own and trying to figure some thing to pass the time. Long winter evenings, you can have them.
The kind of guy Lazy Pete Maguire is - when he says jump! most people in the vicinity put some air between their feet and the ground; When Pete is angry he uses his voice the way some people use short lengths of lead pipe - persuasively. It's easy to underestimate Lazy Pete. Shading fiveesix in his cowboy boots and with a hairline like the tide going out, he looks like he was born tobe someone's caddy, toting another man's bag. Mr Mild. And most times he's got a first communion smile and manners to match. A regular pussycat.
The first thing to understand is that it's nothing to do with things artistic. I make no claims in that area. What I know of painting could be written on the side of a tin of Walpamur. In fact, it is. In the literary field I was long under the illusion that any book with Gide on the cover should be filed under Travel. Music goes in one ear and out the other and no one can convince me that Claire de Lune is not an opera about a mentally deranged woman called Claire.
Death has been calling in a lot of IOUs. Apart from the private sorrows and the never ending slaughter at the cutting edge of politics - in such places as Afghanistan and El Salvador, a lot of reference points on the public landscape have been disappearing. Hitchcock, Lennon, McQueen, Sellers, West, Raft. Not to mention Col. Sanders, the scourge of the Kentucky chicken, who may be gone but whose aroma lingers on.