Last week, among the multitudes with an exactitude of the same attitude who self-invited theyselves to the legendary Weekend Party of The West Brit Egg Head at West Egg, the spotlight was turned on a bockety thinker (with a h), someone or other called Michael O Loughlin (with two h’s).
In The Unionist Times, i.e., the same Organ Of Record as oor concelebrating Host (aka The Great FOTsby – for it also he, old sport !) MOL mulled over the revolutionary notion that Fionnghlas (with one h), meaning a ‘clear streamlet’ in the Leprechaun, oops, Finglas is every bit as English as Finchley.
It is for this kinda water-muddying mindset (sic) that hard, borderline Poetasters accumulate innumerable curse-o-God handouts from the public purse in DUPlin, all in the name of the Craven Artful Cringe (CAC). Which purse is, of course, under the auspices of the squander-maniacal CrocoDail Eireann, currently ` concelebrating its dollars, dimes and centenary. Minus its Fada, ar ndoigh, also known as a (gasp) H.
Michael O Loughlin, with his boat-motioning notion was but following in the footfall of another distinguished, and now, alas, dustinguished native of Fionnghlas, oops, Finglas, one, the Finchley-bound Patrick Cosgrave. As Esteemed Blogmeister recently reminded us, in his timely flash- photographic account (containing a hash-tag of aisig-projectilia) of that His and Hiroshima moment in the hilarious history of Irish-Anglo-Angled relationships.
One is referring, gan dabht, to that sheer sub-atomic comic episode when Lord PC barfed for a larf over the lap of his Goddess, as befitted the lap dog of Lady Turner-Knott in the backseat of her bomb-, but sadly not barf-proof, Prime Ministerial wagon.
An oíche cheanann chéanna chinniúnach gur chaith mac an ghlantóra oifigi ó Fhionnghlas grósaeireacht na seachtaine anuas ó bholcáúin a bhoilg ar ghluin inion an ghrósaera ó Grantham.
Gross, or wot?
-Ya shudda seen the Not-for-turning Lady from Knotty Aisig do a U-turn dat night !
As the Chunderer reported, not.
Later, at a public inquiry held in the Underground Bunker deep within the pre-Juncker bowels of Downing Street, the PM’s bodyguard/driver, Algernon ‘Snotty’ Blobb, a former Tate-head prop with a fine-arts degree, evidenced that the Cosgrave Masterpiece looked, with its impressionistic yellowy tints and daubs of impressive puke, not at all unlike a later Turner:
–The Keelman Heaving in Coals by Moonlight.
Or, as the National Enquirer almost headlined:
-Mr. Moonlight in Vermont Vomit.
Or, as the noted chronicler Ruth Goodly News (oh my bold life peer !) might have noted, but didn’t, minus a fada or two:
-Upchuckied ar La-di-da !
A cake-and-ale veiled reference, go dearfa, to the shameless naming of the semi-detached thatched-cottage roads of Finglas West (Britain) after prominent bomb-planting Provos from the early 20th century, including Barry, Casement, Plunkett, Mellow, McKee, Clune and Clancy.
This happened during the Fabulous (alleged) Fifties, when shifty Patrick Cos-san-Uaigh was but a boy in short pants as distinct from his later persona in prolonged snorts, when the zeitgeist of the musical mo was captured at its height by the Kiss-curled Rotund Good Ole Boy and his rock and role-model band:
-Bill Heavey and the Projectile Vomits.
(Some local historians hiss that this ‘Fings-aint-fot-they-used-to-be-in-Finglas thingy’ has been prompted by the neigbhouring parish getting there first, by naming their local soccer, oops, football team:
-West Cabra Albion.
Maybe so: cads make their own importance/ múnlaíonn bligeáird a dtábhacht féin.
Little wonder then that the current incumbent of Downing Street, one half of the ‘22 Committee, aka Legs 11 of the Number 10, paid a flying visit as a self-invited guest and self-admitted fan of The Great FOTsby to his party in West Egg this week.
The cricket correspondent of TUT, in his usual wickedly droll way, that the second half of the Maggie-May duette adopted her Lady at Lords pose when seated in the presence of the Irish PM, a clear indication that she was completely bowled over and out by Leo the Shirteenth. Who was sportingly sporting, old sport, his Leotard V-neck and his Me for T-shock T-shirt:
-Howzat ! Her stump-like legs were tilted at the appropriate Anglo-Irish angle.
(No mention, oddly enough, of the third stump which had already presumably assumed the pose horizontal).
Local intelligence had informed her prior to her visit that Finglas, oops, Finchley sur Tolkien, oops, Tolka had originally been part of the adjacent parish of Castleknock. Yes, indeed, the birthplace of Leo Vee, aka alumnus of the cricket-playing school called King’s Hospital (!), aka, the 2 Billion Euro man (and counting), aka the Count of Monty Python with a tender tinder metabollix, oops, metabollic age of God Alone Knows Whatzat !.
As mentioned last week, the theme of this latest Weekend Party of The Great FOTsby, was and continues to be:
-The Ganging up on Bobby Ballagh.
This ridiculously talented artist (he belongs to the Cosgrave School of Dimpressionists, not), heing a whiz-master of strong, primary colours is therefore every which way outside the, erm, Pale. In a typically sharp-edged critique in the letter pages of The Unionist Times (which TUT allowed as a prelude and a pretext to offload an awful lot of awfully awfully offal from the Usual Suspects, aka the Team of US), the kind who throng the Weekend Porties of The Great FOTsby in his 60-room mansion on West Egg:
For example: purely by chance, The Great FOTsby, old sport, issued the following prim and pompous how-dare-he communiqué, even while seated upon his fake-fur throne in The Necessary Room:
Robert Ballagh’s recent letter to The Irish Times complained that the Abbey Theatre was “currently being run by two Scotsmen” (actually one Scot and one Welsh man) and that “practically every national cultural institution is being managed by an outsider.
For example, the director of the National Gallery of Ireland is an English man, the new director of the Hunt Museum in Limerick is a Welsh woman, the director of the National College of Art and Design is an English woman, and the director of the Gate Theatre is an English woman.”
Most of the response was (rightly) negative. But, however clumsily, Ballagh did highlight a reality that deserves further reflection. He drew attention to one side of an equation.
The Great FOTsby then knelt down (on his left knee) and recited a litany of literary lions and other Leos who have also followed the footfall of Lord PC of Finchley-on-Tolka. Space being at a prim and proper Premium, one or two examples will again suffice:
Even the most British of gongs, the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry, awarded by the royal family, is available to Irish poets from the North: both Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon have received (and of course accepted) it in recent years.
Pause now, old sport (at the totally, of course, unacceptable) Limerick Junction:
NON-RYHMING COUPLET
Lord Michael Longley, rightly or wrongly
Stealthily knelt for Die Konigin’s gongly
Paul Muldoon
All out of toon
Rocked Schloss Buck with sub-Boss songly
The Great FOTsby does not report where the actual presentation of the Queen’s Gold Medal(s) for Poetry in the Queen’s English by Die Hausfrau Saxe-Coburg-Goth took place. But one likes to think that an invitation was graciously extended to the wagon, oops, Her Maj – the badge, Maj ! – to do the honours on Laganside. Thereby combining One’s biz with plez.
DAMP with another BOTTLE of CHAMP
Hausfrau S-Coburg-G of yet another ship
Replacement went in search: hip, hip, hip
Hurray, heard to say
About that slip way
Of Harland and Wolf: an orthopoedic snip.
The Great FOTsby, modest to a single malt-fault, omitted to mention that he himself is hotly tipped to be the next recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for, erm, poetic prose in the Queen’s English. This is not at all to be confused with prosaic poetry such as the pair above-mentioned have already nailed and knelt down for. The difference is that whereas the latter is pear-shaped the former is such that it smells, tastes and is shaped like a pomegranate.
The initial syllable of which rhymes with the mandatory think bomb of Somme and Uncle Tom, Which, of course, is the crucial ingredient in the current compulsory version of Paddy’s Identity. According, ar ndóigh, to the liberal dictates of The Unionist Times and which rhythm is tapped out for dough to the go-go beat of a tally-ho tally stick (short for Continuity Sticky) on Tara Street, a chara.
Re-spect.
Meas. Meas madra.
The reason,why The Great FOTsby has so far resisted all previous efforts to have this singular honour conferred on his bashful self, seemingly has to do with his incessant inter-continental travel throughout the English-speaking world as Ambassador At Large for Irish-Anglo-Angled Relations (for it is also he, old sport !). According to the current orgy of corgi-like barking by the laptop-less lapdogs on the dark streets of DUPlin – that impeccable source of truth in the throat – he fears that with his Queen’s Medal in his arts pocket it would toss a spanner into the security body-scanners at airports.
Happily the woof word on the street is that he has been granted a special London Derriere derogation from having to sashay the gauntlet of a s.b-s.
It is hardly an accident that the pomegranate is the fruit du jour / toradh an lae in this instance. For, it the fruit which features in Romeo and Juliet:
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
In the prologue to Romeo and Juliet the Swan of Avon quilled the following
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
…Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage.
For a crucial period (1990/91) in the hystery of The Abbey Theatre / Amharclann Naisiúnta na Mainistereach, The Great FOTsby found himself, purely by chance, as its Literary Adviser, or if one prefers, he was its, erm, stage traffic controller.
For someone for whom one of his all time favourite lines of poetry is :
–Níl fuckáil focal Gaeilge agam.
it must be averred by even the most begrudging of curmudgeons that it took some some canister of Chutzpah And Cocones (CAC) for such a moderate monoglot to courageously take on this challenging bilingual role .
–Is air, cinnte, a bhí an aghaidh ! (Bíodh gur aghaidh Windsor Davies a bhi air).
It was around this time too that – and here the plot get curiouser and curioser – yet another moderate monoglot, one Garry Hynes the Corribean Druidess was appointed the Top Dog of Amharclann Náisiúnta na Mainistereach aka The Abbey Theatre on Liffeyside
O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
Which was quickly adapted to a more gender friendly versh :
Through all the hard Border her steed was the best.
It would be tempting to say that they formed the perfect Romeo and Juliet partnership but, alas, Shakespeare fared no better than the Leprechaun ar Abhainn na Life when faced with a linguistich. b.: both of whom were precluded, excluded and concluded by a hard border of moderate monoglotism. Which repast is what your average member of a fada-free CrocoDail Eireann has for a traditional English Brexit of a morning.
Perhaps, and this in purely conjecture, Con Shine, it was opined that the think-spilling quill and inker, The Swan of Avon’ had too much of a thingy re Rivers and the Leprechaun. Avon, alas, is Afon /Abhainn while (gulp) ‘Callino Custarame’ in one of his plays upon words nods in the direction of a Tipp-top hit toon of the 1590s: (gasp) ‘Cailín cois a’ tSiúire Mé’
Final pause at Limerick Junction in County Tipperary.
As remarked upon The Great FOTsby aka TGF (which is short, of course, for TGIF – the mantra to commence his Weekend Porties) once picked up a single transferable talent when he served as a stage-traffic controller.
Look up ! Who’s that in the Thought Control Tower?
People who work with culture are not “citizens of nowhere” but they are innately cosmopolitan. The whole point about Irish people running British cultural institutions and vice versa is that they do it because they can – the differences of culture and language do not form significant barriers.
Hmmmmm.
Time, perchance, to have a stab at an insignificant five-liner:
AN MAIDRÍN LATHAÍ
(leis An Ríomhaire Glúine)
Cuirtear cosc in Aerphort Ríoga an tSeoinín
Ar Aer Leipreachán le feidhmiú an Dreoinín
Le bheith rí-gharbh
Líonn a’madra tarbh
Lena theanga a’Bhanríon Eilís Do ina toinín.
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT: TO BE CONTINUED.
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