Two uncles of the latest free leoder in the Free Southern Stateen did time in chokey during the dying days of the British Raj in India. In the Black Hole of Mumbai rather than the Black Hole of Kolkata. Presumably not for doing the hokey pokey in public but rather for stoking up an Indian edition of Sinn Féin-style sedition against the Khaki-wallahs.
But that was then, and this is now:
-Sinn Féin are the greatest threat to our democracy !
Quote Leo Varadkar (for it is he !) who was in anti-avuncular mood and mode on May 24, 2017 a month before he became the Prim. Min. of the FSS. A quote which would surely rock the boat of, say, Kevin ‘Kushoon’ Myers who is on record for refusing to bow to Fuzzy Wuzzy wishes to dispense with Bombay and Calcutt; he still resolutely refuses to use the demagogue-standard spellings of Mumbai and Kolkata.
‘’On May 24, Mr Varadkar said Fine Gael would become the “united Ireland party” if he became Taoiseach, but strongly hit out at Sinn Féin and pledged to take them on.
“I am NOT holding out an olive branch to Sinn Féin at all, I believe that Sinn Féin remains the greatest threat to our democracy and to the prosperity of this State.
“I see that Sinn Féin is performing very well with voters under 35 and I am very concerned about that, part of my mission as leader if I have that opportunity, is to take Sinn Féin on and to expose them as the party that they are’.
If the Shinners are performing very well with voters under 35 then number crunchers and other bean counters will have noted that the number 35 has become a recurring motif over the first weekend to weekend in the reign of Leo Vee:
-35 thou turned up for An Lá Dearg /The Red Day and 35 thou foregathered for An Lá Bándhearg / The Pink Day.
The following quote is lifted from the embedded anti-haka hack of The Unionist Times, one, Gerry ‘Gervaise’ Thornley.
‘’It’s always the same on Lions tours. Up until the final midweek game before the first Test, there’s the warm-up games and the jousting and sparring in front of the media. Then from a day or two before the first Test the mood music changes dramatically as both the Red Army and the media pack swells’’.
Ah, yis, the Red Army, there in New Zealand from the Four Home Countries to support The Team of Us on their away trip on An Lá Dearg.
Red? As in the first syllable of the(gulp) Redmondite Army?
-Passchendaele for Slow Learners.
Bogball is, understandably, the game of choice of The Red Army, upon which the Sun (not to mention the Mail) resolutely refuses to set, not.
Rather is Bogball the footballing expression of the Bog Oak Monolith of whch Citizen Cusack was the Tollund Man of Intolerance. From the Lions’ Micks to the Mick Lyons, as it were.
Curiously, on the day after Bloomsday the Boggers gifted the world with a right royal example of linguistic, jingoistic intolerance, when Meath were hockeyed by Kildare. A tale of two players; indeed, two tales of two players from the Royal County / Province of Meath.
Two players alone stood out for the Royals:
-One who is destined to go through the world with a chignon (that’s a pony tail), was Cillian O Sullivan while the other was Ruairà Ó Coileáin.
Now, the interesting thing about the latter was not so much the three sparkling champagne points he kicked from play but rather the pig’s tail which the various Oirish commentators made of his name, front and rear:
-Rory O Cullen was the sullen Ulyssean consensus.
Ruairà Ó Coileáin, who comes from a family steeped in horseracing (Saoirse Abú, anyone?), motor racing and boxing among other sports, plays for Navan O Mahony’s. Navan is Anglo-Civilisation for An Uaimh, as in, erm, A Cave. (See below).
Curious how some surnames as, say – lemme see – Varadkar, Zappone and Savita Halappanavar – skip trippingy off the comtemporary tongues in the neo-tolerant Free Southern Stateen – while simulataneously stumbling and stuttering over such bizarre jawbreakers as, say – lemme see – Ruairà Ó Coileáin.
Which brings us to the tongue-wagging tale of the two other players from Royal Meath.
One of the central characters of Ulysses is the verbalist Blazes Boylan; one of the c.c.’s in the Bogball of the Royals was the herbalist, Seán Boylan.
1999 was a good year for a sports-inclined boy to be in Meath: that was the year Meath under Sean B. won the Sam Maguire. It was also the year a schoolboy called Beauden Barret (8) from New Zealand attended Scoil Náisiúnta Fiach Naofa in Ballinacree, Oldcastle where he honed his Gaelic skills of catch and kick. He later went on to donate his All-Black’s gansey as Rugby World Player of the Year as a fund raiser for the local St. Brigid’s GAA club.
Three years earlier a fifteen year old Basque boy name of Xabi Alonso spent part of 1996 as an exchange student learning English and how to play Gaelic football in Trim, County Meath. He later togged out for Barcelona.
(The Royals shudda held on to the both of them !).
Speaking of Barca, P. Guardiola who wore the Bib Bui of Bainisteoir in the city of S. Dali during the Basque boy’s time, delivered ed a pep talk at an independence rally for Catalunia in downtown Barcelona of late.
Thankfully, we wouldn’t have our own Martin O Neill, OBE, stooping to that sorta thingy, mixing footie and folitics, oops, politics.
Eleven thousand miles distant from Auckland where An Lá Dearg / The Red Day was con-celebrated another 35,000 foregathered to con-celebrate An Lá Bándhearg / The Pink Day in Dublin-on-Liffey.
The fair city re-echoed the day before to the sound of frightened horses’ hooves, all heading for the hills around the Hell Fire Club and beyond, to their rallying point at The Sally Gap. Actually, The Sadddle Gap, on the border between the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Hills.
(These hills are in fact higher by far than these mountains. But, hey, TrÃocha Cúig MÃle Fáilte go hÉirinn / 35, 000 Welcomes to the Ancient Irish East where black is the white of Biddy Mulligan’s eye).
-Bearnas na Diallaite / The Saddle Gap.
The horses’ nostrils smell out these destinations; it’s in their giddyap DNA.
Much in the way leopards can catch the whiff of what-iffery from Leopardstown, a centre of equine excellence. Leopards can even, erm, spot this type of topographical thingy eight furlongs away, when the going is soft to medium rare.
Dr. Leo Varadkar, GP (it also stands for General Practitioner) was Present Tense yet totally relaxed at a not to be missed mass rally of 35 thou (many, indeed, in leotards) whose assembly point was Smithfield Square, home of Dublin’s horse and hairy-ass fair. Though neither type of quadruped was present at the weekend, having already hightailed up to the Hell Fire Club and beyond (see above).
The moment that you speak
We wanna go play hide and seek
We wanna go and bounce the moon
Just like a toy balloon
There it was that Leo the Blue Shirteenth, chose to issue his first Encyclical at this Gay Pride (for it was it!) which promises to become a monthly phenom:
-I commit myself as Taoiseach to promoting LGBT rights.
-O !
Formed 35,000 mouths in O-shaped, ovoid-shaped unison !
Re-spect.
You and Us are just like a couple of tots
Runnin’ across the meadow
Pickin’ up lots of forget me nots
(Not unlike his namesake, Bobby Vee, Leo Vee has already got a bounce in the polls, bouncy, bouncy, just like a rubber ball).
The poodles on the streets are also barking from their rainbow throats that the next logical I on the A (I for Item, A for Agenda) is D.I.V.O.R.C.E. for Same Sex Marriage. And are barking in a tone which sounds remarkably like:
-Tammy: why not?
Perhaps, next year, the GP (as in Gay Pride) might opt to give our one-two-three-four legged friends a long overdue break, and co-opt that O to their point of assembly before hightailing it to the (gasp) GPO ? This is an erection on O’Connell Street which is dedicated to the art and craft of licking, stamp- licking. It is but a short step for man to go from Gay to Gay-lick, one not-so-giant step for a kind man.
There is, indeed, a phrase in Leprechaun:
-Lá Coille coiscéim choiligh.
Whose Dineening Meaning is:
-A cock’s step is the incresase of day’s length on New Year’s Day.
Next year, Leo Vee might even address the gathering of 35 (acorns ! acorns !) in the First Official Language at the GPO. Cannot be seen to be either less assertive or conversive than those Subversives, the Shinners when it comes to the Erse.
-I commit myself as Taoiseach to Lá Dearg rites, to giving equal space to the Public as well as the Private.
To conclude where one commenced, Lá Bloom.
The crucial chapter in Ulysses ends with a crucified Bloom, escaping from the Citizen-cyclops. The Citizen-cyclops of Barney Kiernan’s pub is modeled upon the (ardent) Irish nationalist Citizen Cusack, who sought to revive Gaelic sports in Ireland (for the benefit of Paddy Stink and Mickey Muck) as a reaction against England, and its garrison of embarrassing but unembarrassable outsposts of Empah from Rock to Castleknock and from Belvo to Clongow.
Barney Kiernan’s pub becomes, metaphorically, the Homeric cave (see An Uaimh above ) in which Odysseus and his men were imprisoned by the cannibalistic giant cyclops of Greek myth.
Ah, yis, the one-eyed navel gazers of nationalism.
PS On May 24, 2017 Mr Varadkar concluded his launch by promising he would also set up an annual Fine Gael summer school, the first one to be held in Cork in August to coincide with the Béal na mBláth Collins commemoration.
(Workshops in Behind the Hedge Fund Sniping, anyone? Encounter groups in The Leological Significance, perhaps, of The Big Fellow’s Twelve Apostles? )
Céad Mile Fáilte go Comóradh Ui Choileáin.
Eat your heart out Uasal Joyce.