THE   ANTI-BLOOMSDAY by Perkin Warbeck

Last week, the sports department of RTE was beside itself.

-Hi, Donnybrook !

-Howya, Dublin 4 !

This, the broadcasting wing of The Unionist Times, was hyping up the following headline:

– League of Ireland attendances on the UP !   Aggregate attendances of 200,000 for the Season !

Hmmm.

The Perkin’s inner number cruncher soon got to work: four days later he came up with the following figure of his own:

-That works out as,erm, 1,000 terracers through the turnstyles, per club per week, going backward.

Arrived at by dividing the agg. attend. by the number of clubs, 20, in the two leagues (Premier and First which dutifully follows the Mainland Pattern where the First shall be Second, that kinda thingy).

The same RTE, mainly in the guise of their detached soccer, oops, football correspondent, Tony O Donoghue, is fond of whooping about the Full-house Signs going up for, say, the local Dublin derby between The Hoops and The Saints in Richmond Park while craftily avoiding to specify the actual numbers involved. (See just above).

This craft is grafted on to the camera angles employed by RTE at LOI grounds: where, the Lens are trained on the, erm, Shackleton crowd which has been carefully herded to stand behind the scoring goalmouth, if any, thus creating a mirage of a Molehill 16).

The LOI has been described as 20,000 Leagues under the C (for Champions League), probably by Bogballers and / or Stickfighters of the GAH, only all too keen to go into Billy Cottom mode with the pick of his catchphrases:

-Wakey ! Wakey ! to this Fakey News from a Flakey Sports Department.

Possibly arising from the factoid that , while the various clubs have catchy titles – e.g., The Candystripes for Derry FC, the Seagulls for (gulp, the gullible) Bray Wanderers FC and the latest ! – the Lilywhites for Dundalk FC. –they have, alas, failed to catch the imagination of the commonality, apart from the Fladge Few.

One of whom is peace trainer Michael Nugent, aka, New Whine in Old Battles. This is the go-to guy, the studio-hopping camp-bed communicatior on 24/ 7 call to diss the God squad and other daft afterlifers, he’s at the tip top of the A-list of Atheists and other Anti-RC, oops, Anti-Religion Bashers.

The fact that he is a Director of Bohs, aka The Gypsies is odd, rather. Not to mention his eagerness to admit to same. Considering that a far, far greater bucklep of faith is required for such an admisison, given that Bohs are much given to scoring, erm, O’s.

-200,000.

This number / uimhir, giver or take has been bandied about this week, going forward. This time by the bandy-legged Bogballers. For it the figure being confidently forecasted for the Four Game GAH Games Extravangza spread over three days of Anti-Bloomsday this coming weekend. (Bloomsday has been elasticated to Seven Days by the Anal-retentive Anglo-Irish).

Now, how does this compare in a city of 1 million plus folk with other cities of a dissimilar size. Lemme see. Ah, si.

Take, say, El Ciudad de Mexico which accommodates a population of 30 mill-un (Noonan-speak), give or take, senor.

El Perco has a recollection of being in the inner suburb of Condesa there about five or six years ago. This suburb was hosting the two biggest sporting events in the city that particular Sabado:

On one side of a Condesa calle stands the largest Plaza de Toros in El Mundo (capacity 40,000) while directly across the street stands Estadio Azul (capacity 30,000), home to the soccer, oops, football club of Cruz Azul.

Like RTE (see above) Sporting Mexico City was beside itself that weekend.

Both venues were jammers on the day: and El Perco took his place in the former, not yet suffering from the affliciton of insomnia and therefore, in no need of a, erm, super soccer soporific.

Perhaps the best way to describe the arrival of the two contrasting cohorts of support: it was akin to the Aviva being divided against itself, into its two joint tenantries.

The bullfight aficionados were kindred to the Rugga cohort: posh matrons in mantillas y peinetas with long-stemmed rosas rojas in hand (think the knee-warming rugs of yore in Lansdowne Rd) with their moustachioed maridos of mucho dinero y dosh in tow and with nada need of Policia Protection.

Outside the Plaza stood various splendid sculptures of El Toro (think, erm, John ‘ The Bull’ Hayes).

On the less fashionable side of the street, a different scenario was unfolding. Even as the buses containing (no long-distance trains, even peace ones, in Mexico) the out of town supporters of Los Tibunros Rojas de la Veracruz – the Red Sharks of Vera Cruz (no relation) arrived.

Their arrival was welcomed with a warm chorus of boohs (see Bohs above) from the home supporters and this may well go some distance towards explaining the accompanying convoy of Paramilitary Policia jeeps with mounted machine guns at the ready, just in case, senor.

(For the record: the result from El Plazo del Toros was a –yawningly predictable Toreadores Utd 11; Los Toros, O. On the other hand, over on el otra lado de la calle a thrilling draw was being played out: nada-nada, Nadia.)

Lemme see.

Ah, yis:

-70,000 was the aggregate attendance at those two major sporting events.

One is conscious of not comparing likes with like here – there are after all, 4 games spread over One Anti-Bloomsday in Dublino, but still and all.

The Paddy Stinks and the Mickey Mucks to put one over on Los Patricios Hedors y Los Miguels Estiercols.

One is prompted to bench mark all of   the above for Anti-Semitism has been mucho in the air and the airwaves of Myreland this last week.

The etymologist, ar ndóigh, gets it that Ireland morphed into Myreland when an Englishman called Our Kev was moved to move to Hack for Hireland in general and Liffeyside in particular around the time the Croppies rose up, up North.

Liffeyside is, of course, the city which celebrates itself every year on June 16 with a weeklong Bloomsday, a celebration of, erm, Anti-Samitism.

Its sacred text is ‘Ulysses’ whose kernel chapter is the one in Barney Kiernan’s pub on (gasp) Little Britain Street   which lampoons The Citizen, aka, Michael ‘Cyclops’ Cusack, Esquire the number crunching founder of the GAH who made the putative 200,000 this weekend possible, to watch four of the six teams involved compete to lay their hands on (gulp) Sam.

(Also outside the Plaza de Toros in Ciudad de Mexico stands a statue, entitled ‘Oreja y Rabo’. It features a toreador with an Ear in one hand and a Tail in the other hand. Time, gentlemen, time in Tolerant Leo Land to erect a statue outside of Barney Kiernan’s pub, entitled ‘Cluas agus Eireaball’. It would feature the secular St. Leo Bloom with an E in one hand and a T in the other. )

This Bloomsday malarkey is akin – one is not pulling the Michael here – to, say, Jerusalem celebrating itself every year with a Cusackday whose sacred text would be ‘The Protocol of the Elders of Zion’, the notorious antisemitic fabricated text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination.

Curiously, this fake tome was first published in 1903, a year before the day the fabricated events of Ulysses were purported to have taken place (June 16, 1904).

The other word which descended on Myreland this week like the screechy scene from The Words as directed by, erm, Alfred Hackcock, was (imagine!) :

-Misogyny.

Mentioned, in dispatches, in relation to the diurnal topic of Gosh Dosh ! As it related to two of the Major Figures on the Media Landscape on Liffeysdie.

Compare and Contrast the following breathtaking Gender Pay Gap, even taking into account the Apple of his responsibilities with the Orange of hers :

Newly appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Frank Clarke, we are informed, gets to wheelbarrow (or at least his Tipstaff does, on his behalf) home per annum from the curse-of-God public purse,   the paltry sum of :

-295, 916 squids.

Meanwhile, Mimsy O’Call-again of RTE gets to do ditto with (or at least one of her hackolytes, aka, Programme Assistants does):

-299, 000 squids.

Now, it must be pointed out that Frank (as in Frank Clarke) is an abbreviation of Francis rather than of Frances, ergo:

-The M-word !

Perhaps Archbishop Fintan ‘Intinn’ O Toole of the Diocese of D’Olier than Thou might fancy giving a new word – the M-word – (and one for which his surname is uniquely suited to mouth ) to his limitless vocabularly in the German Queen’s English a, erm, Captain’s Run Out this week:

-Misandry.

He might even get the Misses Andrews (led by La Mullally Cat) as a chorus of his TUT colleagues to provide the backing hack track.

Btw, The Unionist Times correctly forecast the solemn, candle-lit ascension of the Supreme Court Justice F. Clarke to the top spot of Chief Jay last week, by the insertion of a twee sentence which was immediately picked up by those eternally on the q.v. (Take a bow, The Perkin’s inner Hawkeye).

Having first pointedly made the point that F.C. had attended (gulp) Drimnagh Castle, CBS, an educational establishment, not known as an Egg-balled Stronghold, despite a title with its turreted implications. Certainly, a mere school for P. Stink and M. Muck.

Before casually tossing in this double whammy of a throwaway slam dunk, a grubber kick worthy even of Our Kev:

-Justice Clarke is a season-ticket holder of Leinster Rugby at the RDS.

In conclusion, the doggerels on Dublin streets, with raised paws, are barking this High-Five Liner:

A TALE of   TWO CLARKES

There’s Jamie, the Peter Cushing lookalike

There’s Frank’s cushy job of the pay hike

One’s in a forensic mood

One’s down on turpitude

Two Clarkes from both sides of a Dark Sow’s Dyke.