Picture by Mathias
Boy oh boy – has this gay marriage referendum thrown up some beauties! I thought I’d seen it all when I saw Gerry Adams embrace what looked like (from behind) an attractive young woman. On closer inspection at a later point, however, it turned out to be Rory O’Neill?/Panti Bliss, who must on his/her own give a huge boost to the shares in make-up companies. Me, I’d flinch in the face of such an embrace. Gerry Adams – may God forgive him – looked as though he was enjoying it.
Then we had Enda in the Garden. Enda has taken to talking in a funny sort of way in recent years. Remember that speech of his in 2011, promising transparent government (a laugh in itself) and ending with the odd comment “Paddy likes to know the price of things”? Well Enda in the Garden brought things to another level entirely. “With today’s vote we have disclosed who we are. We are a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people who say yes to inclusion, yes to generosity, yes to love, yes to gay marriage.” Mother of God. Fighting them on the beaches was never in it.
And to top it all, the man who’s been invisible since losing the job of top dog in the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, emerged blinking into the sunlight and declared “I think it is a very powerful statement by Ireland to the rest of the world.”
What was that line: success has many fathers, failure is a bastard? Something like that.
Jude, you seem quite nonplussed by Gerry’s embrace of PantiBliss.
Wasn’t he brave enough to shake hands with Prince Charlie?
And in that manual embrace they both held it long enough to have me wondering about their relationship.
‘Nonplussed’? If I knew what it meant I’d probably agree. It was just that from behind Ms Bliss looked quite fetching. From the full front s/he looked a bit more fetched…
Jude, when you find out what it means you might let me know.
Logically, non plus should equal minus!
By the way, if you’re tilting your cap at PantiBliss, it would be preferable to your old flame Ruthless.
A no-brainer, Sherdy…
You will no doubt take pride, Esteemed Blogmeister, in the recent rocketing to rainbow fame of a former student of yours.
Call it the Fiannian’s Rainbow factor.
That would be be the former Fianna Fail TD whose failure to regain a seat at the last Election was down in part at least to his aversion to the limelight. As a public figure he was doggedly attached to the concept of privacy.
Indeed, it may well have been this intrinsic instinct for inconspicuousness which made him the natural choice for the portfolio he was eventually to hold: Minister of State for Social Obscurity.
But, that all changed, changed utterly after he had lost his seat. Overnight, as it were,in fact the very morning he decided to exit the closet on the critically-acclaimed Emma Empathy radio show on RTE which occurred, quite coincidentally, in the run up to the recent Referendum de dum to cum and just gone.
To keep up the furnished figure of speech: by losing his seat, Pat Carey (for it was he !) gained a chair.
And now, Pat Aerach Carey (as he is now !) has just been appointed,(gulp) the Chairman of The Irish Red Cross.
Which is a fascinating gesture of magnanimity on the part of a Fine Gal Y’are Government.
For seemingly aeons the Chairmanship of the Irish Red Cross was synonymous with the name of Leslie,Bean de Barra, the relict of the General Tom Barry.This d. ambusher of Kilmichael infamy was, oddly, enough, a particular bete noire, of one, Eoghan ‘Helicopter’ Harris.
Possibly on account of his switching his military allegiance from BA Albion to Flying Column Celtic. Swopping, as it were, the trench foot for the trench coat.
Tom, the ex Tommy, was truly a figure of substantial flippancy who treated the solemnity of a military allegiance as something akin to, erm, a political football.
Indeed, it was Eoghainin na nAontachtaithe / Eoghaneen of the Unionisits the very same dispassionate scribe of the Sunday Dependent who once and off his own bat, trenchantly fingered (in the metaphorical sense, of course) the trench-coat tradition to which the then Chairman of the Irish Red Cross in 1969, belonged.
Which – well, blow one down ! – coinciided with the funnelling of funds from said organisation north of the Black Sow’s Dyke for the founding of the piranhas of political mayhem, as distinct from Mayhew. A factoid which emerged and was subsequently submerged in the Arms Trial.
But, dat was den and dis now, to quote from the chameleonical Corkonian’s extensive bivouac of bon mots.
No fear of any of those sinn-anigans with Pat Aerach Carey in charge. When the only Arms on view will be those extended in tolerance, decency, inclusivity, generosity ad inFineitum and adFiannaitum.
Forget about that discredited man of steel, the ex-Tommy, Tom Barry and concentrate, rather on Tommy Steele who played the role of the Irish fairy aka leprechaun, name of Og in Fiannan’s Rainbow. And whose themed song ‘When I’m not near the guy I love’ had Perkie’s ink-stained pinkie tapping out the rhythm on That Great Come-and-Get-It Day in the courtyard of Dublin Castle.
‘Every feminazi to flutter by me
Is a flame that must be fanned
When I can’t fondle the hand I’m fond of
I fondle the hand at hand’.
If anything symbolised the burying of that bone of contention in the Free Southern Stateen’s political culture, between, the respective rainbows of Fiannian and Finean it was that historic badge on the left lapel of Pat Aerach Carey.
With the symbolic monosyllabic message: TA. Or, in the Q’s English: Thaw.
Perkie’s inner nail-biting file can but respond leis an Luimneach seo leanas / with the following Limerick:
Ta deireadh anois leis na hoicheanta fada feirge
Sa chorfa ag Cathaoirleach na Croise Bandeirge
Lionfaidh ar gCara
Sala arda de Barra
Codloidh on am seo amach magairlin na meirge.
Former student, eh? I hope it wasn’t something I said…
Ah the world is away to hell Jude, I just don’t know what to make of it anymore, who was it said ‘Romantic Ireland is dead and gone,it’s with O’Leary in the grave’ ?
It won’t be comely maidens dancing at the crossroads now,
it could be Gerry and Panty bliss,with prince Charlie waiting to cut in.
changing ireland but hopefully a better one than where a gay man has to go into defense for being what he is. The ireland of the consenting adults doesn’t sound like a bad place.
nothing to stop comely maidens dancing at the crossroads maybe it stopped for the lesbian connotations, get it going again, would be more craic for them than starring at their phones contemplating scoring some crack, or what ever the kids are into these days.
How did the land of saints and scholars become the land of gays and liars,the liars being in the Dail?
The only decent thing we have left is the GAA,after that this place is just a kip as Eamon Dunphy famously called it,and the wee six is a basket case,
looking forward to next Easter and all the hypocrits out showing how great they are.