Cashman's Diary - March 1982

Monday 1st.
I watch the swans dying outside the Cfdistillery of which Mr. John Lynch is a director. I suppose he assumed that they -serene, tragic, and balletic - had to be children of serene tragic balletic C. J. Haughey, awaiting the call of their spirits from this stormy world.

The bottomless iniquity of this Lynch was for countless years a seccret from all but myself. I had thought to remain mute on the subject, recoggnising how much I cannot say for reaasons that all in Dail Eireann underrstand. But even I was flabbergasted that he should become O'Malley's preeceptor, clearly intending the loathhsome Limerick cockalorum to take up, advance, and consummate his evil.

Lynch should, of course, have been guillotined at the final whistle of the '47 All-Ireland, for the losing of which he was wholly culpable. But precious moments were lost ascertaining whetther I wished to perform the ceremony myself, and when Lynch, was sought for the reckoning he was, as became his unvarying - and for him fellicitous - custom on such occasions, over the hills and far away.

That he should pretermit a stylish, seasonable, and well-attended death by my hand in order to become the tout of a tout is proof of the most egreegious philistinism. That he survived to become so is a reproach to and a diminution of our jurisprudence and our foxhounds.

Wednesday 3rd.

A report is brought that Flor L1't Crowley's abjuration of Dail Eireann may be in some wise due to his being cast off by that temptress amongst thesmothetes, that advoutress amidst advocates - La Flahertia. I am prostrated, and bitterly reflect upon my fruitless expostulations with Sammson, Marcus Antoinus and Parnell beefore similar, though lesser, catastroophes.

My duty is clear. I beard the grueesome dowager and tax her with this heinous malefice to the nation. She is unperturbed. She has total recall of each one of her many millions of acts of synergic nether convulsion. She mentions Eoin O'Duffy, Professor Magennis, Dessie Hynes, Thady Quill, Gary Gilmore, Hugh Hefner, Billy Bunter, Kevin Keegan, John Jinks, and Sadly Smitter. But not Flor.

My joy is unconfined. Our Spartttan idyll is unsullied. And Flor will . gird himself again to bestride Pam asssian peaks whene'er Matt Doolan beckkons.

I order a little celebration and we call for Barry Cowen. Flor recites in Sanskrit from the Vedas while Mr. Cowan telephones Harold McCusker about a choice of socks. The globe is back on its axis.

Saturday 6th.

I am beset by mountebanks and lillipuians

-One of O'Rourke of Callas, Benings addresses me a relement in Teutonic. This tongue I find entirely inconsilient with the usages of well-mannered people: perhaps the wretched heckler is trying to be funny? But poor O'Rourke is no wit although poor O'Rourke has brains - and if he had a little more he'd be a half-wit.

I grieve that poor O'Rourke has been reduced to such devices to bring himself to my notice. Still, what's done is done, and I shall soon visit and bring him some caraway seeds and a change of motley.

I have not been to Callas, Benings since my joint tour with Bismark. The place was not, I fear, remarkable for its anticipation of the rather speccial needs of the occasion and of its guests, and I spent, perforce, a remonnstrant hour before a pedigree harpy was furnished as a makeshift to solace the umbrageous old junker. Thence poor O'Rourke and his barbarous linnguistic preference.

I shall break the facts to him gently and briefly, and pass on to some cheerring introductory remarks about evoluution.

Monday 8th.

i go to Thurles to complete my purrCf chase of the Sportsfield which I shall furbish fittingly for Raymond Smith's visit to the centenary celebraations in '84. This transaction will see me a little straitened, but there is no other way to thwart the plot that would have given of place over Mr. Smith to Cusack or some other commparative pygmy.

The assemblage includes John O'Grady and many other Persons In Good Standing in the gaelic athletic world. I learn that Mr.O'Grady is posssessed by an infinite tapeworm, which,

by some arcane kinesis, transmutes its remorseless inexorable growth into commensurate viscid verbiage.

The oracular air of the gathering moves him. He expounds, and waves rapturous on, the Spartan ideal which has sustained Flor Crowley and myyself through long and troublous days.

The P.I.G.S. are not moved with him. "Come out now." "Up Garibaldi." "Lock up your daughters." "No surrrender." "Give the woman in the bed more porter." - These are among their responses.

I sometimes feel that I should lend my time to a downtrodden and unnworldly outfit like Glen Rovers, whose chief of men is currently arranging its participation in the Third Division of the Turkish Hurling League, far from the rude and grasping Cork arena.

Thursday 11 th

My security staff tell me that UVl they have been putting a spoke or two in the wheels of the neoLuddite bell-wether Lane. They have sequestraated his autograph book and his cake mixer. I am not pleased. My orders to them were to cut his purse and shred his nomination papers before the elecction. But it seems that he was rather too many for my lot.

Lane is indeed acuminous. He is probably the only person alive who can locate the borderline between "public service" and malversation with any precision. But the Spartacus of the Slums has no sense of esotericism, and can any day be heard declaiming that Sean French is the only inhabitant of the public service side of that border.

This is not the first time that the fellow has been bothersome. He it was who cost me immense sums of money by beguiling my labourers to stop bringing their own wheelbarrows full sand and gravel to my construction sites each morning. He would have gone further and had them leaving their jackhammers, pickaxes, and shoovels at home as well, but I directed the trades unions to halt this gallop.

My security staff are most eager to try Constipation Therapy on him, but I find their obsession with this method wearisome and decremental of my image.

I recall that the advent from Budaapest many years ago of Claud Cockkburn had an excitative effect, similar to Lane's, on our little community. Threshings finished before eight pm., handholding became common, and Protestants disagreed in public. It seemed to many inevitable that Mr. Cockburn would be given Constipaation Therapy. But it did not happen, - yet the radical tomfoolery ceased.

I shall have a word with Joe Sherlock again. •