The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Saturday, December 22, 2012

it was a couple of days before christmas

Paying for my coffee in the Tearman Cafe in Kilcullen.
"That's on the house," says Josephine the manageress, refusing to accept my social welfare cash.
"It's a Christmas miracle," I exclaim.
"Here's another one," quoth she warmly, "have a free Irish Times on us."
"That abortionist anti Catholic rag?" sez me. "That's more like a Christmas curse."
"No," cries Josephine with a smile, "it would be a curse if I gave you a Leinster Leader."
Mildly bemused I exited the shop.
Not for the first time I was struck by the odd harmonies of mystery and fate and comicality that chime with insistent yet melodious optimism over the winter of my discontent.

Friday, December 21, 2012

angels i have heard on high

Quaffing a coffee in the White Water Centre while browsing through Lynn Picknett's conspiracy theory book about the Turin Shroud.
It's good for a larf.
The seasonal shoppers swirl by.
I am dimly aware, as I wrestle with Miss Picknett's thesis, of what passes for Christmas music among the post Christian corporatists of the Western World playing in the background.
A variety of modern hymns segue into each other.
There's John Lennon's 1973 classic:
"And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Me and Yoko are trying to precipitate
A surrender in South Vietnam
A very merry Christmas
To all who have come
The near and the dear ones
And especially the Viet Cong
A very Merry Christmas
War is over
If you want it
Merry Christmas
War is over
If you want it
We surrender
If Ho Chi Minh wants it
War is over
Take Vietnam
If you want it."
As I sit in the Costa Cafe I realise the lyrics still hold up pretty well.
The song is replaced momentarily with Bob Geldoff's paean to himself.
It goes:
"It's Christmas time
And there's no need to be afraid
Even if you're a communist dictator routinely starving your own people into submission
We're gonna let in light
With free food and drink for your psycho army
And banish shade
Feed the Ethiopian dictatorship
Let them know it's Christmas Time again
Feed the Ethiopian dictatorship
Extend the lifespan of the Ethiopian politbureau by another five years
And in this world of plenty
We should shed a tear or two
Throw your arms around me and Midge Ure
And resurrect our careers
It's Christmas Time.
Buy my records and something called Midge Ure's as well
Feed the dictators
Let them know the world owes them a living
Feed the dictators
Let them dine out while their people starve.
Feed the Mugabes
Let them know it's Christmas Time
Cancel African dictators debts
Give them a new credit line again
Let them buy free jet fighters to bomb their  own people again
Let them source free tanks and howitzers again to unleash on the villages
Throw your arms around failed pop singers
It's Christmas Time."
This song also has dated somewhat better than expected, retaining a surprising contemporary feel, nay a piquancy, in a world where human values can seem all too transitory.
In truth gentle travellers of the internet, I am having trouble retaining my equilibrium as the ghost of John Lennon and the ghost of Bob Geldoff vie to make me throw up.
Finally a real song comes on the speakers.
It is Jonah Louie's immortal Stop The Cavalry.
The salient part of it goes:
"Bubba dubba bum bum
Bubba dubba bum bum
Bubba dum dum dubba dum dubba bum bum."
Sounds vaguely obscene doesn't it.
This is the first thing they've played that I can like without feeling I have to argue with its politics.
It's anti war too of course.
If you read between the bubba dum bums.
Still you can't have everything.
And not a word against the Great Louie.
It is Christmas after all.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

on stopping by starbucks on a snowy evening (with a biting hamster up my jumper)

Whose cafe this is I think I know
His corporate headquarters is in Seattle though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his cafe fill up with proles

Whose cafe this is
I haven't a clue
The place is full of teen yobs now
They will not mind me stopping here
As long as I don't catch their eye
Or stare at their girlfriends' legs
Or otherwise interfere
With their magnificent lives
Of serious drugs and casual sex

My little hamster must think it queer
To stop without a hamster wheel near
Between the grocery and the bookshop with the Dude Where's My Car counter assistants
The darkest evening of the year

He gives the spare tyre on my belly a nip
To remind me to leave the Russian waitress a tip
The only other sounds the shriek
I unleash at the sight of my own blood

This waitress is lovely dark and sexy
But I've a biting hamster up my jersey
And budgies to feed before midnight mass
And budgies to feed before midnight mass

********

(Apologies to Robert Frost. No really I'm very sorry. Or was it Robert Service?)
(It was Robert Frost. - Robert Frost note)

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

the silence of the louts

Father Brian Darcy, the veteran lefty priest supposedly silenced by Vatican censorship, has continued his bid to become the noisiest silent person in the history of silence.
This week he spoke in support of the super thieves Sean Quinn and his odious family.
Sean Quinn and his family (cf odious, Oxford English Dictionary) helped corrupt management at Anglo Irish Bank to burgle their own bank by accepting multi billion dollar loans from the bank and then sequestering the money.
By the end of this scam, the Quinns themselves owned fully 25 percent of Anglo Irish Bank, an astronomical shareholding which they had acquired using a portion of the improperly gained billion dollar loans furnished to them by their accomplices in Anglo Irish Bank management Sean Fitzpatrick, David Drumm et al. (Particularly Al. He's the worst of them.)
Irish citizens were then compelled to pick up the tab for the money that Sean Quinn and his family had helped Anglo Irish Bank to steal from itself.
The largest portion of this stolen money had been concealed overseas in property holdings and other financial instruments operated by the Quinns' Russian mobster associates.
Lovely lovely people.
A corrupt but now deceased Fianna Fail Minister called Brian Lenihan looted the treasury and borrowed the nation into a hundred years of unrepayable debt to bail out his friends and supporters at Anglo Irish Bank.
Anglo Irish Bank was no in the top three of Irish banks.
There was no legitimacy to the bail out.
It was a smash and grab on the Irish Republic by Brian Lenihan on behalf of Sean Quinn and his family and their corrupt accomplices within the management of Anglo Irish Bank, and their overseas Russian mobster allies.
Brian Lenihan's wife is Patricia Ryan, a Circuit Court Judge.
What chance have we of justice when Fianna Fail and their corrupt kleptocratic anti Catholic successors in the Fine Gael Labour coalition government, what chance I say, have we of justice, when these criminals have packed the Judiciary as they packed the boards of gangster banks, with their friends, party supporters, sons, daughters, wives, girlfriends, and mistresses?
But I digress.
Father Brian Darcy this week spoke out in support of the gangster Sean Quinn and his gangster family.
Father Brian Darcy appeared at a Nuremburg style rally in support of Sean Quinn and his odious progeny, in the rural fastness of County Cavan.
Sean Quinn and his disgusting brood and their supporters claimed that 4000 people attended their rally.
This means the real figure was probably closer to 1500 IRA supporters and their connections.
Not an insignificant number.
An army of 1500 thugs willing to commit violence on behalf of Sean Quinn and his nefarious children could do a lot of damage.
A lot of damage to our country, our society and our laws.
I mean more damage than they've already done.
Let's face it.
The now deceased Fianna Fail government Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and his successors in Fine Gael and Labour have spent this country into the Third World overnight in an attempt to cover up the criminality contrived by Sean Quinn and his treasonous offspring and their accomplices at Anglo Irish Bank.
You gotta wonder.
They've destroyed the country.
The Irish Republic may not survive them.
But what more damage can they do?
I'll tell you.
The rally in Cavan is the beginning of visible societal collapse that will accompany the further damage that they can do.
But I digress again.
Father Brian Darcy summed up his attitude as follows at the rally in support of Sean Quinn and his oleaginous relatives: "You have to support your neighbours when they're in trouble."
Now.
Father Brian Darcy has deemed the arrant thievery of Sean Quinn and his grotesque family and their grotesque Irish and Russian Mafia associates as being "neighbours in trouble."
Father Darcy!
Your neighbours are in trouble.
Your neighbours are the five million Irish people who have been impoverished by Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour, in order to cover up the theft of the nation by Sean Quinn and his worthless genitalic excrescences. (Heelers means his sons and their wives and their cat Tiddles. - Ed note)
Father Darcy!
I would have you know.
Sean Quinn and his (insert term of opprobrium here and synonym for family), Sean Quinn and these robber baron amoral tycoon subversive tykes, have literally burgled every single household in Ireland.
They have burgled every household in Ireland for the next hundred years.
Father Darcy!
I know the Pope has been unable to silence you.
But perhaps you'll listen to me where you scorn to listen to the Pope.
Father Darcy!
You are a thundering disgrace.
Now shut the fudge up.


****
Copies to: Mickey Harte and Fine Gael Member of the European Parliament Sean Kelly who also spoke at the Nuremberg rally in defence of murderous nation bankrupting thieves, Sean Quinn and his delightful family.)

Sunday, December 16, 2012

strange visitors

come with me
to the darkest most beautiful night
that the world has ever seen
and ever might
we can sit on the straw
we'll get warm from it
and watch the stillness draw
a cloak of peace
through a time of war
lambs are calling in the fields
that this night is forever
and forever yields
to this night
we are there
hid in the warmth
from things that are old
and things that are rare
look look my friend
gold
frankinsense
and myrhh