LAPDOG BITES BULLDOG (33) by Perkin Warbeck

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

So then, why precisely  did a yelping lapdog with a laptop choose one Charles C. over a contemporary Charles C.  as a target for a prolonged skelping with his cattleprod-shaped crozier in The Unionist Times ?

 That targeted Charles C.  would have been Father Charles Coughlin, the RC radio demagogue on Stateside  who boxed all the right thicks with his ‘lyrical Irish voice’ (Canadian nurtured) and his  – the clincher – Top of the Morning tipping of his RC clerical hat to Herr Hitler, sor. (see far, far below)

But, gan dabht, in this the octave of  St. Patrick’s Day, it is incumbent upon one to be charitable in one’s attempted understanding of this bizarre ignoring of the self-evident target, the other  Charles C., the Gerrymandered one, as it were, far more germane to the location in q..

One is reminded also  that this is the weeklong day which celebrates a different resident of Crumlin – Brendan O Bachus, and for all the wrong reasons – such as Drink Guinness, oops, Diageo  to responsible excess and become blindingly skunk drunk in the puke-tinted process. Even while turning up the stereo on this Punch-packaged stereoptype for technicolour yawn-merchants with their sawn-off spray-gums. And no carping, led thoil, about the appropriateness of the (gasp)  arse-over-head Harp as a logo for the ‘mogo on the gogogo’ in the (gulp) W.C. Fields of Athenry.

(Let the word be leeked that St. Patryk was that rarebit, a Welsh gentleman).

Rather  than celebrating BOB  for the blindingly obvious right  reason –   such as Breándán   Ó Billingual a  thig on dtús an riachtanas a bhaineann le bheith in ann labhairt go comhuaineach ó dhá thaobh an bhéil  / who instinctively recognised from the off the sheer necessity for being eerily equipped to speak simultaneosuly out of both sides of one’s one mouth. To wit, to woo:

Necessary for the Survival of the Fittest in this doffing-of-the-hat to Toff-sponsored TUT in this  English-only Emerald Aisle  of St. Patrick, Taff Extraordinaire.

(As he displayed, not least during his LFM stint in the Abbey Theatre / Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann,  Finchley  Fintan (for it is also he !)   has a Fáinne Fatwah in his quiver with a liver. A pointed fact  which ultimately paved the way for the craven choice of ‘Somme Enchanted Evening’ by Frank McDiageo, oops, McGuinness as the Cultural Centre Piece of the, erm, culturally-inclusive  Pearse-bashing in the 1916 Centenary Bash in DUPlin. Not to mention the bashing of a peaceful powerfree Paddy protestor with, erm, ‘a lyrical Irish voice’  by the Canadian Ambashador in Grangegorman. Odd, indeed, how Canada seems to have become a recurring motif). 

Mention of the Fittest one of same whose  name has survived to the point of thriving  in Occidental England – soon to be the only English-only speaking member of the EU –   is, ar  ndóigh, Gerry Fittest, Lord of the Common Toucher.

Which serendipidly  enables even the most thimble-brained  to segue in a nimbled-footed way to he whom The Great FOTsby (for it is also still he !)  somehow overlooked and thus left undercooked:

-Charles Coburg.

Hmmmmmm. Indeed, who morphed into Herrrrrrrrrr.

You think Charles Coughlin had a freaky-deaky upbringing which involved learning to speaky with a leaky  ‘lyrical, Irish accent’ in Hamilton, Ontario (what a neutral commentator might describe as ‘outré’), but beside Charles Coburg he was, unlike the Dublin Drive for Five-in-a-Row Colours, on the Halfpenny Bridge. Éist le seo:

Charles Coburg was born Charles Albany in Clermont House, Surrey in 1884, seven years before Charles Coughlin. He was privately escalated in the public comprehensive school of  Eton where he learned, not unnaturally,  to  dine off his ‘lyrical English accent’.  He was a grandson of Queen Victoria but one with a, erm, fringe on top: he became the favourite grandchild of the lady known affectionately within the phenomenally wide  family circle as ‘Humpty Dumpling’.

Incidentally, the same Queen Victoria first (and last) married her own (gasp) FIRST cousin, name of (gulp) Albert  Saxe-Coburg-Goth. It was a union blessed with eight, oops, nein ! nein ! nine kinder for Victoria was delivered of nine  bouncing offspring, each of an anomalous ounceage.  Which leads us deep indeed into Deliverance country, for sure: cue Duelling Banjos in the background, for truly are we mired hereabuts in six-fingered, web-footed, two-nose territory.

Futurologists and other Bookies of the Bodycount already began to speculate on what killings in the betting shops of Europe the Lion und Unicorn would evetnually  make. Including the powerful Paddies and other sons  of the Eight Counties – nein! nein ! –  the Nine Counties of Ulster, even  as they marched towards the trenches of Mainland Europe where the going was sure to be soft, both underhoof and in the head. Gott im Himmel alone knew.

-Y?

In the immortal  upfront question of Joe (ní Bean Joe anois) Duffy of the ‘lyrical Ballyfermo’ accent’.

But, first, back to Charles Albany, who also numbered (gulp) Baron Arklow among his entitlements even as a young Etonian. This may or indeed, T. May not have explained his life long attachment to (gasp) Irish stew even by the time his taste buds had become goodbuddies with dinkelbrot, schweinsbraten und  zungenwurst itself.

In 1900, when he was just a lad of sixteen summers,  Charles Albany suffered the emotional equivalent of a plane crash. This came about when a vacancy, caused by a death to which we  are all in debt, occurred in the German  Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg and Goth. Although not first in line nonetheless Grandma, aka Empress of India, insisted her fav mac mic  hoover up his stuff, his staff  and other belongings  and head over to Das Vaterland to fill the vacuum, pronto,  like a dutiful cousin (or cousint as they might pronounce it in ‘the lyrical Crumlin / Ballyfermo’ accent’).

Queen Victoria  waxed quite velvet under the collar and indeed went not quietly into Gentleman Jim Reeves mode:

-He’ll have to go.

Even when the mother of Charles Og pleaded with her to, erm, tell the man to turn the Dukebox way down low on the list of prioritites, Her Maj Die Hausfrau of Schloss S-C und G (UK branch office)  in what was later (July, 1917, in fact)  to belatedly become Schloss Windsor,  remained obduate in her frigid rigidity:

-He’ll have to go.

He went. And in the process  Charles Albany  morphed into Carl,  Duke of S-C und G., eventually ending up true to the rosc catha of his new Coat of Arms: Treu und Bestandig by resisting Die Englanders in the first great Anglo-Saxon Civil War (14-18). For which resistance his first cousint, the overweening George V in 1915 acted like a real meany and stripped Carl  of his Order of the Garter despite his still having two legs, albeit rheumatic, to stand upon. 

Which brings us back to the Ballyfermo’ qustion of Joe and further back to the arranged marriage of the two first (though not necessarily kissing)  cousints:  Victoria  and Albert :

-Y?

C.C.

The first C stands for (gasp):

– Consanguinity.

Which all RC school pupils (at least) on both sides of the Black Sow’s Dyke learned about  back in the day, long  before the  Occidental Englanders launched their familiar Fatwah:

-Consanguinity is a dirimint (a daarlin’ word, Joxer) impediment of marriage as far as the fourth degree of kinship.

Put that peppermint dirimint in your mealy  mouth and suck on  it, Preacherman !

The second C stands for a wordcluster, oddly enough, not entirely dissimilar to Consanguinity. That would be:

– Con the Shaughraun.

A rollickingly incisive  knee-slapper  by the dystopian  Dion Bouccicualt which was first staged in New York in 1874, and became the rage of Broadway,  ten years before Charles Coburg (né Albany)   was born  and 17 years before the Canadian-born Charles Coughlin of  the ‘lyrical Irish accent’ first saw Fáinne Geal an Lae / The Dawning of the Day.  And would have knocked the leaden, dull, unfunny, ‘Somme Enchanted Evening’ into a cocked caubeeen as a choice of play to politically incorrectly  commemorate/ celebrate  the Irish life-assertive Rising of 1916.

-I’m a corpse !

That is the memorable three-word one-liner which Harvey Duff , the informer, on hearing that his cover had been rumbled, uttered. Made as indelible to the memory when uttered in his gravelly growl / a ghlor gairbhéalta by the legendary Abbey actor  Peader Lamb, clad in his ragged grey frieze overcoat, Irish billycock hat, red waistcoat, brown knee breeches, patched gray stockings, ankle jacks, no nekcerchief, check shirt collar, open at the turkey neck, as, say, the knocking at the gate in the Scottish Play did to Thomas de Quincy, a contemporary essayist of  Charles Lamb.

This was articulated  in a superb pre-LFM production at The Abbey/ Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann.

 There would be, of course, no place in these enlightened times/ Times  for the fabled  Peadar Lamb, in whose company The Perkin once enjoyed an immortal afternoon in the lounge of  a Liffeyside hotel, not uncontagious  to the Abbey: three  hours of anecdote agus  seanchaíocht   passed like the proverbial three shakes of the ovine tales. 

Peadar  was a stalwart of the Leprechaun-scripted Geamaireachtaí Gaeilge na Nollag/ Yuletide Pantomimes of pointed politcal satire  in the Abbey Theatre / Amharclann na Mainistreach,.Now, alas, a dim memory,  in the tolerant,  culturally-inclusive  TUT-controlled  DUP-lin, consensus capital of Occidental England.

Peader was the son of a different Charles Lamb, the Portydown-born artist who made of Connemara his canvas. On his mother’s side Peadar was  the grandson of Ford Maddox Ford , the English novelist. Coincidentally,  this novelist, whom Anthony Burgess described as ‘the greatest British novelist of the 20th Century’  was born Ford Herman Hueffer in Surrey, 1873, spent some time in Germany,  but Anglicised his name in 1919. His most celebrated novel is ‘The Good Soldier’ (1915).

So?

 -I’m eight million corpses !

This is a  four-word one liner which might easily have  been sewn into the text of ‘Somme Enchanted Evening’ but wasn’t: perhaps because the same tedious  text is so depth-less and wit-less.

The following is the Paddy whack with his cattleprod-shaped crozier  which The Great FOTsby,  that pulpit poser and cynosure  of every Occidental English eye, smacked Fr. Charles Coughlin for the purposes of, erm, indecent exposure: 

When war broke out in Europe, Coughlin strongly opposed FDR’s Lend Lease programme of aid to Britain and argued that Hitler should be allowed to get on with the job of crushing the Soviet Union. The war, he claimed, was a Jewish war: “Because Jewish international bankers own or control the gold of the world, it is their war.”

Compare now and contrast that with this about which Mum (as in Queen Mum) was sung in TUT:

Carl Coburg  formally joined the Nazi Party in March 1933 and that same year became a member of the SA (Brownshirts), rising to the rank of Obergruppenführer by 1936. He also served as a member of the Reichstag representing the Nazi Party from 1936–45 and as president of the German Red Cross from December 1933–45. By the time he took over this position, the German Red Cross had already been under the Nazis’ control.

 By 1936, he had agreed to be a spy for Hitler, while attending the funeral of George V at Sandringham, for example but he was unreliable, according to a historian, “telling them what they wanted to hear”.Hitler also used him to encourage pro-Nazi sentiment among the Duke of Windsor and his wife. Records indicate that Charles Edward received a monthly payment of 4,000 Reichsmark (worth about £16,000 in 2015) from the Führer.

 Hitler sent Carl Coburg to Britain as president of the Anglo-German Friendship Society. His mission was to improve Anglo-German relations and to explore the possibility of a pact between the two countries. He attended the funeral of his first cousin George V as Hitler’s representative in the uniform of a Stormtrooper (SA) general of the German army, complete with a metal helmet (his British uniforms had been taken away when he was stripped of his British titles). The Prince sent Hitler encouraging reports about the strength of pro-German sentiment among the British aristocracy and about the possibility of a Britain-Germany pact. After the Abdication Crisis, he played host to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the former King-Emperor and his wife, during their private tour of Germany in 1937.

Incidentally, when Charles Albany reluctantly transitioned into  being Carl Coburg he also acquired among his familial baggage the following cousins: the Kaiser and the Czar.

Níl siad imithe uainn go fóill, tá’s agat / They haven’t gone away, you know:

While the first needs no reiteration it ought to be noted that in the case of the latter,  the Czar, the larger than life link is still deserving of a think tank, indeed a Surrey think tank with the odd hair clip tossed in: 

-KGB.

That would be, erm, the increasingly larger than life,  Karen ‘Gaffe’ Bradley.

Ní amháin go bhfuil sí- SÍ – , Domhnach i ndiaidh Domhnaigh, ag titim ní amháin  chun feola ach chun fola chomh maith, be gob.

To conclude,  by a commodious vicus of  recirculation by swerve of logic and bend of argument, to where one began, and the necessity of  being charitable, in this the octave of St. Patrick’s Day,  in one’s assessement of just precisely why The Great FOTsby’s inner Preacherman opted to ignore the more obvious Charles C.

After due consideration and many a sleepless day The Perkin modestly comes to the following conclusion: when Finchley Fintan (for it is still he!) was invited to deliver a taut, provoking homily from the storied pulipit  of St. Patrick’s borrowed Cathedral his farflung fame as the possessor of the highest IQ in Occidental England (look up Carauntoole) preceded him.

Carauntoole? Fie on Carauntoole ! His is a Himalayan-high IQ !

Which led his thoughtful hosts to operate the stroke pulley,  thereby raising the  Regimental Colours of HM’s Imperial Indian Army which dangle reverentially, wrangle free,  above the pulpit in St. Patrick’s borrowed Cath-edral. Pride of place pennants which recall to penitents  the sub-tropical lands  wherein  said soldiery  with commendable  dignity set themselves a hectic schedule  and – goodness gracious me ! – had an alt-right good go at delivering it.

A hectic schedule of essential ethnic cleansing of sub-humanity from the sub-continent. Certainly, doctor, if the hearts of the troubled natives which went, erm,  boom-boody-boom, boom-boody-boom,  not to mention the way their, erm, Calcutta Cup of  whupped woe runneth over,  were anything to double diagnose  by.

Hence the considerate hoisting by the hosts of the Regimental Colours  for fear they would toss the feathery hair on the  head of their  high-IQ  holy guest  homily-deliverer, thereby evoking dangerous thoughts of, erm, Deliverance Country.

It was thought, a truly Christian thought, that Charles Coburg had suffered enough. After all, he was ultimately reduced to watching in the local cinema in Coburg the coronation of his cousin, Elizabeth in 1953 and shedding a surreptitious tear or ten.  Pffenig-less, alone, exiled  and unpunished.

And after, alas,  after all,  this melancholy scenario does not quite fit the Knorritive of the Souper Stars of Six of One and Twenty Six of the Other.

To conclude the conclusion: for The Great FOTsby the ultimate mortal sin is: Anti-SOMME-itism (see far, far above)..

                                       TUILLEADH   LE  TEACHT: TO  BE CONTINUED

Comments are closed.