As Time Goes By - August 1984
Bloody heat.
Bloody bus strike. A CIE management that sends redundancy notices to men dying of cancer. You wonder why there's a bus strike. Bloody CIE.
Bloody bees. Stupid neighbour comes across a nest of bees. Pours boiling water on them, beats them away with a stick. Angry bees take to the skies, send out scouts, scouts come back `guy over there needs some sleep, let's nest in his bedroom. Five in the morning - zoom-zoom, buzz-buzz, achtung , run. Send for man with beeemask and squirty thing. Go gettem, kill the little bastards. Charge! He did. £19.50. Bloody bees. Bloody neighhbours. Bloody bank manager.
Bloody Lee Dunne. On the radio again talking again about how he beat the bottle again, man. Thought we were shut of him. No, man, y 'know, the bottom line, man, it's a bitch, man. Bloody radio.
Bloody Lord Henry. Animals, he says, from the North, he says. Scratch a liberal. It's time that honest Fine Gaelers like Oliver J. Flanagan hunted this little wimp out of that once-great party.
Bloody heat.
Bloody holidays. Everyone going off or coming back with sombreros or chocolate bloody Eiffel Towers. Me sitting here hitting little keys. Let's pray for an epidemic of dysentry.
Bloody rumours of a bloody general election. Why bother? Swop one shower for another and they'll do the same anyway. Put the present shower back again and they'll say they have "a mandate". Nothing as dangerous as politicians with "a mandate". They'll use it to scrape the butter off your bread. Anyone remember being asked to "Vote far Me and I'll put a tax on your water"? Bloody liars.
Bloody Irish Times Summer Series. Come summer and the hacks are dragooned into writing long boring pieces about out-of-the-way places that nobody ever goes to except hacks in search of someplace boring to write about. Remember when they had their Great Airports series? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Next year, Great Lamp-posts of Dubblin. Or a series on Our Favourite Cullde-sacs. Bloody journalists.
Bloody Indo. Begrudging little bits of articles and editorials about Nicky Kelly. Quite entitled, of course. Free press and all that. If Kelly robbed the train he should be in jail. If he didn't, ah, well, doesn't that mean that someone else should be in jail, like maybe the people who put Kelly away in the first place? That's what we say. Vindicate Kelly or put him back in jail. None of this humanitarian nonnsense. He's the one calling for the innquiry, you'll note, not the Indo. And if the Indo wants to write about the case it should get up off its arse and do some work and not write opinionaated rubbish that is factually inaccurate. (Advert. Round Up The Usual Susspects, £4.95, from your friendly local bockstore.) Bloody journalists.
Bloody heat.
Bloody Olympics. Liars running and hopping and skipping and jumping. Amateurs. Yeah. Bloody hypocrites. Bloody Wimbledon just over, ambiitious freaks poncing around dressed in advertising hoardings. Bloody sport. If it's not Wimbledon it's the bloody Olympics and if it's not that it's the bloody World Cup. And in between it's showjumping bloody showjumpping. Coghlan for Gold in '88?
Dick Spring. I ask you. Dick bloody Spring. Who is kidding bloody who, right?
Newman's People. God!
The bloody price of drink.
A new Secretary of bloody State for Northern Ireland. Maybe. Know what that means? Gets off the plane in Bellfast and announces "a new political initiative". Know what that means? Another promising political career down the tubes. Remember rolling devolution? Maybe sliding devolution this time, or weaving devolution, or zig-zagging devolution. Bloody idiots.
Michael O'Bloody Halloran, new "Lord Mayor" (God save us all) of Dublin. Instead of Mary Frehill. He may be your First Citizen but he's not bloody mine. Fiver to the first person to pull his chain until his face turns blue.
Bloody heat.
Earthquakes. Don't start me on bloody earthquakes.