St Benedildo’s College, Chill Mo Chuda

If you want a vision of hell, go to the Stillorgan Luas station on a windy Wednesday morning. It’s not even in Stillorgan. It’s lawless out there. The wolves walk around the place wearing those blue stripey shirts with white collars that Sean Fitzpatrick et al wore during the Celtic Tiger. Some people have pink hair. Some people eat chicken-fillet wraps wrapped in a further layer of cling-film. Think of the children Joe. They don’t even have velcro here, Joe. How’s the childerints supposed to be fastening thezzir shoe-laces Joe? It’s cridiminal, so it is.

You can smell the poor people a mile away. They pretend they’re going to work at Vodaphone [sic.], but no real job starts at ten in the morning. Narrow windows. Nothing else but to curtain-twitch.

Gallop your gee to Fanny. Make a clock with your cock, and dwell forever in detached suburban grimness, occasionally driving your Volkswagen Beetle down to Centra for a plastic-packed tikka masala. It’s like being in America, only with less nuclear power and more heroin. Happy children playing together in school. They’ll be dead eventually, like ourselves. Sinné Fianna Fáil, atá ag dul go bás.

Graham and Edith's Naughty Half Hour.

Mr and Mrs Graham Whitethorpe, a fine couple of midfortysomethings who lived along Marlborough Road, Dublin 4. Being good Protestants as they were they went to church every Sunday and were of good standing in the community.

Now there is a rather unfair prejudice against Protestants that they're tightfisted cockmunchers. Of course, that's not true. However, a little story may illuminate you as to the ways of Mr and Mrs Whitethorpe as particular examples of the Protestant kind.

Graham and Edith had just had a romp one Friday evening as they were about to go sleep. Edith was rather tired and needed to be up in the morning in order to bake cakes for the Mothers' Union cake sale that Sunday afternoon, and so she turned around to go asleep. However, Graham had other ideas.

'Edie dear,' said Graham, 'would you fancy another bit of rumpy-pumpy?'

'Whatever for Graham darling? I must be up rather early in the morning to bake cakes. And Reverend Swann is coming over for elevenses!'

'Well, I just thought, while I have you here we might as well get our money's worth from this rubber. I mean, it did cost all of two pounds fifty, which I think you'll agree was a little bit on the steep side.'

'O, always the thrifty one Graham dear! Go ahead then darling.'

'Close your eyes and think of England, and I'll be done in two minutes.'

And so they had another bit of slap-and-tickle. However, the poor condom had given its money's worth already and gave up the ghost just as Graham was getting into the, er, swing of things. And so Edith had a child at the age of forty-six, which was terribly inconvenient for her career. But at least it gained her a little bit of credibility in the Mother's Union circles.

God love them, even though he probably doesn't love Protestants. A-women.

The 48th Eurachistic Conference.

Pope Benjidict the X vee eye called the 36th Euchratistic Conflagration in the year 200diddlysquat to be held in Dublin, Ireland for the celebration of Eric Clapton's birthday. The proceedings were renamed "Ecumenical Congress" as the word eucharistic was considered to be offensive and frankly racist to the hindus, muslimists and protestants. The actual event itself was not, however. Well done yet again catholic church.

Day 1 began with a huge procession from Bird Avenue, Clonskeagh to the Pro-Cathedral, Marlborough Street, which was hampered by a large number of pigeons and junkies, but got there eventually. Benediction was pronounced (or whatever verb is correct with benediction, given, benedicted, popeified, etc.) outside the Pro at 5pm just as all the whitecollar types were going home from work.

Now most of these types didn't give a rat's flute about the holy proceedings happening outside the Pro. As a matter of fact, some of them downright despised catholicism, the pope and the chorch. Two of these were Wes and Brian, a pair of queers who lived along Grand Canal Street, Dublin 4. Wes and Brian were two nice chaps in their 30s who had been husband and husband for a few years now and loved nothing more than an evening drinking a nice bottle of mid-range wine followed by a session of weird sex games where they shoved parsnips up each other's noses and smeared gooseberry jam over one another's arses. But of course that was fine in our Tolerant Modern Society where Anything Goes.

Sadly, Wes and Brian had to get divorced in 2004 because one of them discovered the other had raped his dog. Jeesus. However, they met weekly thereafter in the sleaziest joints in Ballsbridge for a quick parsnip and a royid.

The end of the Eorcastic thing was interesting because of a scene which occurred just there beyant O'Connell Bridge. Mary Robinson was there to review the proceedings and it just so happened that she mistook Brian Cowen's wife for the pope, which was very embarrassing, considering there was no pope there at all. Now that was a faux-pas if e'er I saw one.

Well done Mary. Well done Brian's wife. Well done Wes and Brian. Well done Clapton. Well done pope.

Well done all round!

Fucking Vagnians.

Dr Brian Fitzgibbon was an ordinary young thirtysomething from Mount Merrion who had recently got himself a job as assistant lecturer in UCD's history department. He was a nice guy apart from his severe pent-up anger stemming from repressed homosexuality, but never mind all that.

Now it just so happened that one day just before Christmas Brian decided to go and buy his granny a voucher for her favourite shop, Arnott's. You see, Brian may have been born in Dee Fowr, but his family originally hailed from the northside—Arbour Hill to be precise. Not that he was ashamed of that at all. He was quite proud of the fact that he was a northsider at heart. He preferred not to tell anyone about it, but he was proud in the knowledge at least.

Brian's granny was a fine woman who was approaching the big 8-0 and who loved nothing more than a morning in town followed by a cup of tea in Arnott's. In recent years she had taken to getting the Luas home and disembarking at the Smithfield stop, which was dead handy as it saved her having to walk. And what's more, it was free! Well done government. Well done Charlie Haughey. Recession my arse. Sure it's all grand.

Well, it was indeed grand until the morning of the 22nd of December when Brian decided to take a trip down Henry Street. O, he thought as he passed the side entrance to the Ilac Centre, that reminds me of my childhood when my idea of fun was to go up and down the bubble lifts all day, before I discovered history. Life was great back then indeed. Just as he approached the entrance to Arnott's he spied a dealer selling lighters, two fer a yoorow.

—Gecher lighters, two fra yoo-row.

Brian thought for a second and realized that this might be an idea. After all, he'd spend most of Christmas smoking funny cigarettes with his dubious friend and colleague Dan who lived in a charming flat there just off Bird Avenue in Clonskeagh. It was a perfect location since the sound of the Muslim call to worship is about seventeen times funnier when you're high as a kite. The whole affair was likely to end up like that last episode of Peep Show series one, but we won't mention that here for Brian's sake. Two lighters for a euro, can't go wrong.

—Excuse me, may I have two lighters?

The lady was about fifty years old but judging by the smokeinduced lines on her face she could easily have been ninety-seven. Her face looked as if it had been belted on several occasions with an iron. Brian suddenly felt the urge to puke, but repressed it as he did with most other unwelcome feelings, adding them to his bubbling pot of repression.

—Two yoo-row plee-ez.

—But you said it was two for a euro...?

—Did I? Ah well, I lied. Sure you have to say dese things nowadays to ge' a bi' o' custom with them fuckin' Vagnians comin' in and takin' our jobs left righ' an' centre. It's terrible. All of us dealers here have to tell pure an' utter lies just to sell a few poxy lighters. It's despera'.

—But what are you talking about? Brian was very confused. Here was a woman who probably had never even sat a state exam in her life confusing him, Brian Fitzgibbon, who had a Ph.D. in the influence of Vatican sovreignty on the course of the Second World War from Trinity College Dublin. Utterly confounding.

—It's the fuckin' Vagnians, comin' over and takin' our jobs. My father Billy Reilly owned the best hardware shop in Dublin down on Benburb Street until the fuckin' Vagnians came along and started selling hammers out of their caravans for next to nothin'. And then he had to go and throw himself in the Tolka. Fuckin' Vagnians. Pack o' hairy foreign bastards.

—But...but what's a Vagnian? Brian suddenly felt like an idiot, and that rarely ever happened to him, except when he was around Dan. But that's another story also.

—Those bastards from Vagnia or wherever. Comin' over here and takin' our houses, our jobs, our social welfare, and worst of all, our cock. Fuckin' Vagnians takin' Irish cock. I mean, women in Ireland used to be able to take their pick of whatever man they wanted, but now those Vagnians are selling gee for nothin' in every back alley from here to Westmoreland Street. I'm fuckin' sick of it. Fuckin' Mary Robinson, mouldy duckheaded aul' cunt. She ruined Ireland lettin' in all those bastard foreigners. You can't go down the street now without seein' some Vagnian in a fancy dress asking for money. You can't even go into Supermacs without been served by a fuckin' chinky.

Brian was getting more uncomfortable by the minute as the lady continued with her racist tirade. All he wanted was a lighter, hoping that somehow it would aid him in getting his hole with Dan. It had been a grave mistake.

—And as for those Polish, they're a pack of cunts. My brother Billy used to be the best painter and decorator in Phisbra until those Polish fuckers came along and put him out of business. Now he's in Grangegorman, God love him. Those Polish are worse than the fuckin' Chinese, they—

—Stop! Please! Brian couldn't take it any longer. A crowd had begun to gather and were all staring in a palpable mixture of amazement, amusement and disgust. He felt like crying, but he did his very best not to.

—I don't want the lighters, he said dejectedly and began walking away, forgetting about his granny's present.

Strolling aimlessley, Brian eventually reached the top of Henry Street. Turning to the right he saw a group of women in colourful dresses gathering outside the GPO and swapping babies.

Fucking Vagnians.

A Friday Night in Dublin, Year 2022.

Somewhere in the not too distant future, 14 years from now, Dublin is a changed place. Metro North carries boisterous skangers from Finglas to Stephen's Green every five minutes. The Irish Independent has a dirty page 3. Gay Byrne is dead, God love him. TV3 is now an adult channel, showing complete and utter American dirt every night of the week. The Spire has been blown up by the UVF. Catholicism no longer exists, and the Pro-Cathedral has been converted into a gay bar with St Kevin's Oratorio as a leather fetish shop. Clery's has become a knocking shop. Stephen's Green is filled with northside junkie bastards. The canal is full of shite. Croke Park now seats 500,000 people and the entire Phoenix Park has been converted into the Phoenix Car Park, the largest in Europe. In fact, Dublin has become pretty shit.

But not everything has changed. Dublin Bus is still shit. Capel Street is still a load of hole. Cabra is still common. Ballsbridge is still full of posh bastards. And most of all, Twenty-Ones is still a mouldy, poxy kip.

—FREE HOLE.

Inside the dark, dank abyss of Twenty-Ones, Lola Sleevend is there dancing her arse off for yet another Friday evening all alone. Despite the fact that she is now 34 years old, Lola has been coming here every week since she broke up with Keerawn back in 2006. If you do the maths, that is, of course, a grand total of 16 years of weekly holegetting. What a desperate aul' hoor she became. In the first few years, she got hole on average eight times a week, but as she got older the hole opportunities decreased proportionally. By the time Lola was approaching 30, hole was almost non-existent for her, and rightly so in a club meant for 14 year-olds. By 2022, Lola was so desperate for hole she had started offering it for free.

—FREE HOLE. Lads, would yez like yer hole?
—Eh, no thanks love, yeh can keep it.

In a far corner of that same club stood an equally old Keerawn, so desperate for hole that he had taken to showing off his mickey to any girls who passed by. Despite several courses of herbal penis-enlargement tablets, his mickey was still inordinately small. To make it worse, girls always assumed he was jewish, which was terribly unsettling for poor Keerawn. By 2022, he was so desperate for hole that he exposed his mickey all night from open to close, hoping that some passing youngone would take the hint. However, just as Lola had told him, girls would rather have a Big Mac than a Happy Meal, and the fact that he was about 20 years older than most of the girls in the place didn't help either.

—Girls, would you like to see me mickey?
—Ah jaysus, you call that a mickey?

—FREE HOLE.

—Girls, would you like to see...?
—Fuck off ya paedo!

—FREE HOLE!
—Jaysus, what a desperate aul' hoor.

—Girls, would you...?
—Jaysus, didya see that durty aul'fella?

—FREE HOLE!?
—Bleedin' hell.

—Girls...?
—FUCK OFF OR I'M CALLIN' DE GARDS!

—FREE—HOLE!!!
—JAYSUS, CLOSE YOUR LEGS WILL YA?!

And such was the way of Lola and Keerawn, a pair of desperate mid-thirtysomethings who tried too hard to get hole for too long. In spite of years of attempting to get hole in Twenty-Ones, they never succeeded. Lola's greatest success was meetin' eight mingers in one night. It's quantity, not quality, so she said. But still, it didn't do her any good, and Keerawn neither.

FREE HOLE. God love them both.

Ten Things That People Don't Care About Anymore

1. Cassette tapes
2. Morality (just like in the case of the poor little culinary couple)
3. Using the right knife and fork
5. The number four
6. Harry Nilsson
7. Pez
8. Animaniacs
9. Finishing things
10.
11.

Our Cake Bastard (A 21st Century Parable)

Dear children,

Once upon a time, and a very very good time it was, a man and a woman were living together in an apartment in Raheny. They were not married and therefore in the eyes of Gawd and the Chorch they were technically living "in sin" as they say. As if this were not bad enough, they were shagging as well, the pair of durty hoors. His name was Johnny and hers was Teresa. She came from Offaly, so that probably explains it. She was awfully fond of offal into the bargain, but as Fr Brian would say, that's just sick. And kind of irrelevant.

But one day as Johnny and Teresa were sitting together at the pre-marital breakfast table Johnny had an idea.

"Teresa," sez he, "do you know how to bake?"

Teresa looked at him for a minute as if he had suddenly turned into a monkey. "What? Ay doon't knoo ennything about beeking!"

"Well then," says Johnny, "why don't we take cookery classes?"

Teresa mulled this over in her simeon little brain for a few moments and then shrugged her shoulders, indicating that whatever was to be done was Johnny's decision.

So, Johnny, being a good boy, enrolled them both in cookery classes. Every evening they tried new recipes and never again did they have to phone up Domino's Pizza.

The following Christmas, buoyed by their new-found culinary prowess, they invited Johhny's posh Ballsbridge-dwelling aunt and uncle for Christmas dinner. Perhaps it wasn't a wise choice for their first Christmas dinner, but how and ever. The dinner turned out fairly all right on the day, but it was what happened afterwards that we will concern ourselves with.

Jump back six weeks. Johnny and Teresa had taken the initiative and began to bake a Christmas cake. But no ordinary Christmas cake. This was a superbly fabulous Christmas cake containing only the most expensive ingredients. But most of all it was a joint effort between the little culinary couple. The cake turned out all right and they left it wrapped up until Christmas day when they cut a few slices for Johnny's aunt and uncle.

Now the problem was, Teresa was just a little bit thick and so she mistakenly added a whole bottle of whiskey to the cake, as well as lashings of cinnamon. Now, because of some bizarre chemical reaction which resulted from the fact that the whiskey was in excess and so the cinnamon was the limiting reactant, as soon as Johnny's aunt Margerie took a bite of her slice of cake her skin started breaking out in awful red spots and she promptly expired. Uncle Jimeny was so shocked at this that he had a very large heart attack and died also. And there were Johnny and Teresa, left staring at the bodies of Johnny's poor posh relations.

You see, the moral of the story of the story is this, you see. Indeed. Johnny and Teresa shouldn't have been shagging when they weren't married, but they didn't care. And they shouldn't have been making cakes together either. The problem was that being unmarried, the cake that was the product of their relationship was thus a bastard cake, also known as a cake bastard. And so it was always going to be cursed. Especially afterwards, when they were both arrested for poisoning poor aunt Margerie.

And there you have it. The Poop and the Chorch were right once again. 1-0 to the Vatican.

Roiding in cors with RO'G.

Those old Southside lads of a weekend do be going into the aul' bars near the river, but only those firmly on the south side of the river. Like Q-Bor, Messrs', and loike awl those posh places in Temple Bor, roysh.

These unscrupulous laddish types with their rugby shirts and their bling-bling (splatter choo choo) find that with the help of a really bad put-on New Yoke accent picking up thick girls is pretty easy for a bit of a score, loike.

Example:

"O, hoy, my name's Maddy and I'm from New Yoke."
"Ah Jaysus, yer accent's bleedin' sexy."
"Oh my Gawd, loike, are you from the Nortsoide?"
"Ah Jayz, are you a fuckin' Soutsoider bollix?"
"Don't ever loike come over to the Southside again or Oi'll roide you and throw you back in the Liffey."


NEWSFLASH:

A READING FROM THE MADE-UP CHURCH OF ULSTER

"Rev" "Dr" Ian Peeslee has issued a new Papal Bull which decrees that "THARR WALL BE NOO GEES IN AWLSTER WHAYLE AY AM FURST MANNASTER OF NORN ARN".

New ad campaigns include and "Save Ulster from Fairy Liquid", "Ulster says no to Rufus Wainwright", and "Death tooy Alton Jawn and awl big farry geeboos". (The latter is "unofficial".)

"Dr" Peeslee says, "Ay yooysed tooy yooyse Farry Lackwad wan that lattle beebee waz on that boddle, but noy that Farry Lackwad raprazants the gees, ay will have noo moor ov ad in may Chorch. Noy wee yooyse Quansworth's bast yallow leebel woshin-up lackwad fur cleenin mee Yooynyun Jack dalf."

Ian "Little Bollix" Jr said when interviewed, "May doddy is rayt, the gees wall destroy Awlster and the Meed-Ap Chorch wath tharr big pank flooyts. Kall tham awl!"

Marn MaGannas said when interviewed, "Shan Fayn wall meek noo comment on Een's remorks. Ay lov Een, but nod in a hoomoosackshooal wee."

MICKEY