With the precipitous drop in over the counter sales of The Unionist Times (for it is it!) in the recent past – down from 120 thou to 60 thou copies in ten years – these are, sadly, calamitous,erm, times for The Paper of Rex Accord.
Although the plummet from the summit of 2007 has not quite accelerated to 32 copies per second per every second week nonethless the gravity of the situation will be appreciated on discovering that the rate of acceleration in sales has now reached a rate of 26 copies per second per every second week.
Enough indeed to give the Massenets of Mass Communicaiton cause to pause for Meditation on this loosening of the,erm, Thais-that-bind-us-Southern Yunes with our Imperial Past.
It behoves one therefore to cast a rheumy eye over a typcial week’s output to see where one could maybe spot areas of newspirint where there might be room for improvement, thereby putting one in a postion to suggest alterations in a desperate bid to reverse the possible irreversible.
To accelerate, oops, to arrest the Decline and Fall in Sales of the Anti-Roman Empah of Hibernia (which is what the Romanists dissed this Wintry West Britannia).
So then, to The Narrative, oops, The Knorritive of the Souper Star Scribes of the Lennie-the Lion Hacketariat.
MONDAY finds Una Mullally and Gerry Moriarty vying for attention. Now, normally, nobless obliges one to give the ladies first dibs over the laddies but in these days of Egalité, Liberté et Sororité perhaps La Mullally, the Infra Red Top of the Rainbow Repubiic, might not thank one for opting for the hackneyed old paternalistic routine.
So, first up is Gerry Moriarity who thoughtfully sought the assistance, possibly over a cosy cup of curried yoghurt, of legendary Londonderry linguist Greagóir Mac Cambhéal to decode the Leprechaun on the headstone of the fusillade-friendly Martin McGuinness:
-East Derry DUP MP Gregory Campbell said the headstone’s description of Mr McGuinness as an “óglach”, the term the IRA uses for its members, challenged the “hyperbole” that built him up as a statesman after his recent death.
And there’s mo from the thoughtful , assistance-seeking Gerry Mo:
-UUP politician and former British army officer Doug Beattie also said the “reality was that Martin McGuinness remained wedded to the IRA until he died”.
And so then to La Mullally who pens a penetrating yet poiginant paen and/or homage to Fab Vinnie:
The glamorous life and painful last days of Vincent Hanley
Pioneering DJ Vincent Hanley died of Aids 30 years ago on April 18th. His close friends recall a vivacious personality – and how their world changed on his death
-For the first time in Europe, a music video programme was broadcast on a terrestrial station, causing ructions in family homes when it clashed with GAA on Sundays. His links from Central Park, Times Square, Fifth Avenue, and elsewhere around Manhattan, offered a glimpse of American glamour that was escapist and aspirational in grey 1980s Ireland.
Hmmm.
There was one thinking that it was the 1950s which had the market in 50 shades of Grey cornered: seemingly not. La Mullally of the Sisters Grimm, with gay abandon opts to dangle that particular hardy laurel around the turkey neck of the 1980s.
And in keeping with this Air on the G-string, the greyness of that dour decade is exemplified by – rugby? No. Soccer/ Footie ? No. Hockey? No. Slow Bicycle Racing? No. 56 lbs shot over the bar? No.
Why, it’s the good old (gulp) GAA !!!!
Hmmm.
Strange, very strange. For, as it happens, it was the same decade during which another DJ first came to prominence, a DJ whose black and ambered necromancy clashes rather than blends with the anti-glamour of an ashen-shaded greyness;
-DJ Carey.
So, then, a clash of the ashes between D. J. Carey and the DJ – (off hand, one cannot think of a surname to rhyme with Carey) – of MTV.
Even curiouser, is the choice of the GAA by the Go to Spokesperson for the Galiphate: for the GAA is not just for the (gasp) Guys.
Could La Mullally therefore be including, say, the DJs of the Camóige world,i.e., the Dorabella Jocastas who tend to score more goals than points among the Grey Heminences? Surely not, Shirley !
One awaits clarification.
TUESDAY : There is a real ‘Ooh-ah, sing Ooh-ah, Up the Raj !’ feel about the output on this day’s edtion of The Unionist Times.
With the two names in neon lights being E. McCann and F. O’Toole who are to be seen, erm, trotting to the fair in a fanfare of post-Fenianism.
-Derry goes to Seethe !
Well, actually, E. McCann’s piece is entitled:
-Anger still seethes on the streets of Derry.
The Prophet of the People before Profiteers as usual waxes Wagnerian with a Wengerian flourish even as he has a de rigeur dig at G. Adams along the anger path:
-The flag on the coffin had a particular significance in Derry, marking the end of a strict protocol which had operated in the diocese for 30 years.
Hmmm.
Eamo seems fixated on the same old, same old flag, so much so that it may well prove to have a, erm, tricolor-down effect on his future dragnet of flags which are flaunted above the flagstones and within other Factional Faith Houses of Worship.
Within the vicinity of, f’rinstance, St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland (sic) Cathedral in Dublin 2 there is an upscale delicatessen cherished by refined Dubliners, and known as ‘Gobble and Go’.
One mentions this because it has a CCTV system which collaterally captures, by accident of course, worshipers who enter and worshipers who exit said Cathedral, that lien-to of liberalism, aka The De Hackto National Cathedral.
The Perkin, therefore, will be keeping the eye beady on the CCTV footage of ‘Gobble and Go’ in the off chance he might glimpse a bullet-headed pacifist in the process of surreptitiously entering and exiting this particular Edifice of Ecclesiastical Edification.
And a subsequent eye on the putative McCann account:
-From the Butcher’s Gate to where the Butcher’s Apron awaits.
From the CCTV to the CCC:
Fintan O’Toole: Brexit means Ireland must be the anti-England
Seeing ourselves as opposites used to be a bad idea. Now it might be a necessity
Eh?
Fine-minded Fintan of the Swinging Surname, is right.
-Being the anti-England is not about being anti-English. Irish Anglophobia is dead and if it ever stirs again we should place another stake through its heart, just in case.
No, Uncle Fintan, being Irish does not mean being ‘anti-England’; rather more specific than that. Like, say, being ‘anti-Sea Shanty England’ which holds that Section 31 rules the Airwaves, that kinda thingy.
Being Irish does not mean one cannot appreciate the Irish essentia and the English essentia both simultaneously, and, at the same t.
From the latter, at random, take five: the comedy of Benny Hill, the music of Ronald Binge, the prose of P.J. Wodehouse, the World Wide Web of Tim Benners-Lee, the voice of Emma Kirkby.
Should try it sometime, O, Fintan of the Swinging Surname, especially try appreciatring the Irish essentia / Bain triail as, am éigin, níl sé ró-dhéanach, fiú duitse.
It might even spare us the following tosh for the posh of Dortland who like their Orange squash neat:
-What’s at play is something different: a way of thinking about Irish identity that was summed up with typical pithiness by Samuel Beckett when he was asked “Vous êtes anglais?”: “Au contraire.”
Meaning?
Apart from Le Toole’s chance to smuggle in une deuxieme langue to remind us that he is in the awesome tradition of Le Haque-Philosphe a thing whch they do do so well in La Rive Gauche de Paris.
Pardonnez-moi, the French, but, even by CCC’s standards, this is truly Merde of/ and for the Herd. Ce genre de chose-y.
Perhaps , that other quote from St. Samuel a Beckett might be more a propos, i.e,
-quel est le son a applaudir d’une seule main?.
For there is a certain lacuna, an undeniable absence of resonance in the, erm, reasoning of the Bonoglot of a Mongrel B.A.C., the sound, if you like, of one hand clapping. As in:
-Irishness, in one deep stream of thought and feeling, was the opposite of Englishness. Identities are often defined by what they not, and this form of negative self-identification came naturally to an Irish nationalism struggling to break the link with a country that dominated not just us but much of the world. In our dictionary, “us” could be defined simply as “not them”.
-It worked in so many ways. England was Protestant; so Catholicism had to be the essence of Irish identity. England was industrial; so Ireland had to make a virtue of its underdeveloped and deindustrialised economy. England was urban; so Ireland had to create an image of itself that was exclusively rustic.
– The English were scientific rationalists; so we had to be the mystical dreamers of dreams. They were Anglo-Saxons; we were Celts. They had a monarchy, so we had to have a republic. They developed a welfare state; so we relied on the tender mercies of charity.
Eh?
This is the High Octane Horse Manure which the Fine Minded Fintan of the Swinging Surname has been spreading for nigh on half a century. The unctous Uncle Tommy Rot in which he has cornered the market :
One merely has to take the line ‘England was urban; so Ireland had to create itself an image of itself that was exclusively rustic’.
Eh?
Éire: exclusively rustic?
Consider, if you will, the following factoid: Fine-minded Fintan was born and bred in Crumlin, Dublin 12, a street-cred stat he never tires of reminding the mindless of, whose minds he makes a virtue of making up which is where he’s normally at.
Crumlin, as it happens, was just one of a necklace of neo-grotesque suburbs which were thrown up around the city of Dublin in the Dev-dominated decade of the Forties. Yes, that Dev: the one who had a rural fantasy about the comely maidens of the homely mud cabins of the Wesht.
Crumlin, Drimnagh, Walkinstown, Ballyfermot, Sallynoggin, Artane, Killester, Cabra, Harmonstown, Kilbarrack, Finglas : rustic?
Curious, all the same, how Crumlin resonates with Campbell: Crooked Glen with Crooked Mouth. Another thinking-man’s link between the Yunes, North and South.
The Perkin’s inner Cavaleria Rusticana can only respond:
– Mine’s an Intermezzo, Enzo, and don’t spare the Mayo.
CCC?
Oh, yes: Crumlin’s Cerebral Contortionist.
TUESDAY, still: meanwhile over on the Broadcasting Wing of The Unionist Times, RTE, where Joe ‘Anything but Stuffy’ Duffy, was taking up where Gerry Mo left off (see above) and was headlining That Headstone.
As befits Alex Attwood’s jokey locum in Dublin, ever since they graduated in radicalism from TCD all those glorious decades ago, Jokey Locum Joe had as guests on his phone-in prog two gentlemen, one the son of a slain Garda, the other the son of a slain Prison Warder
Sons, as it were, of the Real Óglaigh na hÉireann, to give a balanced head-dominated rather than a heart-partial slant on That Headstone.
Two elements of these phoned-in contributions which might otherwise have marred the prog but which, given the absence of the Londonderry Linguist, were nonetheless, understandable :
One, a certain confusion in the pronunciations of Oglach and Oglaigh:
(Tip: Oglach, pronounced, O-Glock, singular).
And:
Two, a continuous reference to , erm, ‘Mainland Britain’.
( As St. Samuel a Beckett might have responded: au contraire ).
WEDNESDAY: ‘The Celtic Tiger is dead, Long live the Irish Lions !’ roars the rhapsodic heading to Gerry ‘Gervaise’ Thornley’s report of the selection of 11 Irish players on the British and Irish Lions’ party to tour the Land of the Long White Cloud in June.
Well, actually, not that Big Cat headline: it just sounded a little like that, as the Oval-Balled Reporter for the Paper of Rex Accord purrred his delight.
In fact, 11 Irish players is not too far off the mark, give or take a Kiwi and a Springbok, chosen to tour The Land of The Long Necked Black Swan in June.
Although 9 Irish players are actually included among the 11 Irish players listed, to add a little feline confusion to the report Gerry ‘Gervaise’ Thonnley had a chose of the recognised 10 cats sounds in which to wrap his report: meow, purr, trill, growl, chatter, hiss, yowl, beep, burble and wail.
The absence of a few other green-backed Shoulder-to-Shoulders from the final Lion-out, mind, has GT burbling rather than reaching for a celebratory G and T.
The burble is defined as a hybrid noise comprising of a purr, a meow and a growl. Though as it is Big Cats are on the, erm, Lion, perhaps it might be more appropriately spelt as: BURBLE.
Just as the most apt headline might well have been, after taking into account the Banisteoir, Warren ‘Big’ Gatland announcing that his biggest arm-wrestle was not to do with choosing the players but in placating the, erm, Sponsors. Being that the Leonine Tour is all about giving a, erm, massive boost to Brand Rugga.
Hence, the putative aptness of the Headline: The Team of Us morphs into The Team of Usury.
Btw, one seems to have a recollection of some kind of Centenary Celebration or somethiing to do with the Independence of Ireland last year: Breaking the Connection with England, that sorta thingy. Whcih may or may not have focussed on the ultimate hard yards which the undeterred Up and Under terrs who led the Risible Rising finally made in the, erm, Stone Breakers’ Yard.
It would appear as if the IR FU said FU to IR and plumped instead for the B and I for which the mathematical formula is calculated thus: The Four P’s = One P.
Conclusion: Gerry ‘Gervaise’ Thornley is to be confused with Dr. David Thornley, not.
(Sound of Short Whistle for Half-time Interval).
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