The seamless morph from Dublin to DUPlin as the capital of the Orange Free Stateen was a doddle, it being on from the very orff, Carl. Such good fortuna to have Dame Carmina Burana red-hand picked as your lawfully wedded and Lambeg drumheaded political partner.
Rhythm is the primary KTP musical element of this, the high handed Orff Orange Marching Band.
One other minor detail needs to be tidied up, Bridie, i.e., the logical change of rivername from Liffey to Somme but that will only entail the entrails of a song sans a riverdance. Two of the tributaries of the Liffey on the Southeen side of the city, the blue, shirty Danube side of the city, the Dodder and the Poddle, ensure that the change will be also be a, erm, Doddle with a capital D.
The song, the second single syndrome of Jeff and Mutt, may now be revealed in part and not in full: this is only part spoiler-alert territority, Doyler.
It involves a Sam. No, not the name of the song, mind, as in Goodbye Sam, hello Aunt Samantha, but rather as Sam, the composer of the song. No, not a Somme (as in Enchanted Evening) but rather a Sam. As in Tam and Shanter but without the cruel and inhuman punishment of a Drone and Chanter.
The venue, of course, has already been hall-marked: Liberty Hall. Which a vox pop has overwhelmingly named as the Shoe-box atrocity of the century. And it is on the quay wall at the butt of the building that one opts to stall the ball for a wee bit longer. The better to give the guest Jeff no rest from the incessant though well-meaning mouthiness of the host Mutt.
Whom it is rumoured has a whole Boot Hill of ill-paid ghostwriters to maintain his boast-worthy daily output of corduroy prose. Involving a vast acrerage of not only the lonely baloney, but also the phony sanctimonious, reputed to be fifteen acres a day, for goodness sakes.
RIP-spect.
Both Jeff and Mutt, as befits the tender, open and generous welcoming of the, erm, vanguard of the TOG-oak Monolith will be suitably togged out in Tangerine Orange Ganseys to remind the no longer separated brethern of the real, original meaning of DUPlin:
-Blackpool.
(Jeff and Mutt, aka Mathews and Mortesen on account of their comedic banter in between songs: the more forward Stan hails the other: Hi, Stan ! and receives a hearty: Hi, Stan ! back. Truly do the pair of them put the illuminated Hi ! into hilarity).
Mutt, the bony-fingered one, more used to the digitised robotic rebuttal, will point out the local sights to Jeff. He will first point downstream past the Izaac Butt Bridge and then focal point on to the postcodern Sam Beckett Bridge,
Its futuristic filigrees are reputed to be shaped like a harp. In truth, and one has no desire to sound as if one has been structurally instructed to (gulp) carp, but it does rather look more like a (gasp) undercooked carp. True, man ! And a grass carp rather than a grass harp at that, in cold blood, a queer fish and a coarse fish to boot, in honour of the one after whom it is named.
In 1653 Izaak Walton wrote in The Compleat Angler:
“The Carp is the queen of rivers; a stately, a good, and a very subtle fish; that was not at first bred, nor hath been long in England, but is now naturalised.”
A ray-shaped spelling is Compleat from ye DUPlin in ye rare olde tymes !.
At this point, and after having duly pointed downstream, Mutt will then lean toward (no lean to’s of the Dev DIY variety here, no siree !) the left ear of Jeff and mutter approvingly in his ear:
-UDR.
Cue, a chuckle to be unbuckled by Jeff.
With the pleats of his forehead akimbo in the manner of the non-pseudo, ludo-playing intellectual. Mutt will next bark, tenderly, openly and generously, to Jeff . About ? About his favourite and most apposite quote from this particular Sam. It is taken from the short story of the St. Samuel a Beckett canon, as distinct from the Long Storied Liberty Hall.
That would be the, erm, compleated rather than the draft version of the short story from the dysfunctional collection: ‘More Pricks than Kicks’, entitled Draff (sic):
-‘Now in Gaelic’, said Hairy on the way home from the funeral, ‘they could not say that’.
-‘What could they not say?’. said the parson. He would not rest until he knew.
-‘O Death where is they sting?’ replied Hairy. ‘they have no words for these big ideas’
That was more than enough for the parson, a canon of the Church of Ireland.
-‘And so on’, said Hairy, ‘and so forth. They can’t say it once and for all. A spalpeen’s babble’
Hmmmmm.
If a dude, qua, dude didn’t watch himself with this kind of coat-trailing trailer park remark he could well end up in DUPlin, home of the Convenience Feud, with not only a bridge but an art gallery, a theatre, a dry dock of doctorates and. And ? And for services devoted to a lifetime of navel-gazing a vessel of singular devotion itself belonging to the Irish Naval Service named in his honour.
-Sin í an tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh, a Shomhairle, head.
What Mutt is about here – from one Crumlin Roadie to another – is the welcoming on the mat for Jeff. This entails for Finchley Fintan of the Fuckáil Focal (for it is still he !) the Mickey Mousing of the Leprechaun which in this instance quotes the Compleat Nobel Man known as S.B. on the s.b.
Ach, fan bomaite.
-Hold your Flower and have another !
The scholar and his cat, Pangur Bán
(from the Irish by Robin Flower)
I and Pangur Bán my cat, ’Tis a like task we are at: Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night.
Now, Pangur Bawn was hardly the cat’s whiskers on the curriculum of Portora on the banks of Lough Erne, that aura-swaddled school for the molly-coddled spawn of bankable anchors of the unearned Drooling Classes.
If it had been, S.B, disser of the s.b., might well have dabbled long enough to learn that when it came to the big ideas the old spalpeen’s babble was going good-o, Godot. When ? A compleat Millennium ago, at least. Where? In the elysian fields on the Island of Reichenau in – and mark this well to make it count – Lake Contstance.
According to the dollar-collared, reich-minded Mutt the emphasis ought to be on the Reichenbach Falls where, if one were to believe the Fake News of the Fakirs in the Free Southern Stateen, the Leprechaun on the shoulder of O Muircheartaigh fell to his overdue death. No wonder The Reichenbach Falls are twinned with the teanga-doomed Falls Road.
-Nick, nack Paddy Whack, give a dog a Conan.
Nonetheless, the deathless words of O Muircheartaigh, Professor of Vox Pop in the Commentary Box, are, perhaps, never more apropopulist:
–Sa chéad leath d’imir na Leipreacháin leis an ghaoth ; sa dara leath imreoidh na Leipreacháin leis an liathroid. Níl sé ach leath-am sa chluiche seo de chuid Chonan.
-In the first half the Leprechauns played with the wind; in the second half the Leprechauns will play with the ball. It is still only half-time in this game of Conan’s.
AN GHLUAISEACHT MIAOW-1
An Teibíocht, Toblerone agus an taibí
An peata a bhí ag manach ársa aibí
Níorbh sa Teibíocht
Ach cuid dá Ríocht
Míle bliain roimh an monoglot Abbey.
Not one to miss an op to take an extra pop at the spalpeen’s babble, Mutt’s inner, erm, populist was quick to parade more of the Nobelity, moving from the bs on the sb of one SB to the bs of a BS, i.e., Bernard Shaw, another Hairy.
‘On the occasion of of GBS being offered the Freedom of Dublin in he was asked;
-The Revival of the Gaelic Language in the schools and as the everyday language of the people has been pursued by both the Cosgrave and DeValera governments since 1922 and much progress has been made. Hasn’t Mr. De Valera, in achieving complete independence from Britain been of the greatest benefit to future generations of the Irish race.
-Nonsence ! How can we be completely independent of our next door neighbours? Are we not Europeans and citizens of the world? The English language, our most prized acquistion and prized conquest, gives us three quarters of the world for an audience. Would you take it away for a scholastic exercise which was never common speech in any country in the world like 5th century Latin? And torture children with three languages English, school Gaelic and vernacular village Irish. It would be much saner to teach them the bagpipes or the piroueting Highland dancing which attracts us to Scottish gatherings.
Once more Mutt will lean toward Jeff and mutter in tones that are tender, in tones that are open, in tones that generous and not one biteen wolfish:
– UDR.
Cue, yet another chuckle to be unbuckled by Jeff.
So, how to explain the similarity in the text from the two bookmen of the common prey ?
The stock of both Beckett and Shaw was in the flock of the Church of Ireland (sic). But for some unfathomable reason past all understanding by the mere sons of Adam, both boys, as the years rolled by, grew more and more coy about their original membership of the fold of the CoI.
Perhaps this cooling off had to do with the paradoxically ghoulish practice on Liffeyside of the Protestant Ascendancy (and never was it more in the ascendant than in these tender, open and generous box-ticking, erm, Times) of. Of? Of adorning the walls of its two borrowed Cathedrals with permanent plaques.
To? To imperialisic blackguards who once packed mayhem and massacres into their backbacks on behalf of Her Majesty’s Raj. Where? Where the Taj Mahal, imagining it was boss, meant sabotage and so, made Victoria cross.
Amharc anois !
Look, now – there’s Lucknow !
Look too – over yonder, to the allied Oirish banks of the Dodder, adjacent to the sporting cathedral of Lansdowne –where is located a landmark dedicated to the hero of the Lucknow bother himself, Havelock.
The Havelock Terrace at the old Lansdowne Road stadium in Dublin was so named as it backed onto the small 19th C suburban feature. The roof of the newish Aviva Stadium, for example, dips dramatically in response to the proximity of the Havelock Square. This is a genuflective dip which is mirrored in the brawny yet fawning rugga mejia on blueish Liffeyside.
(F’rinstance, Billy ‘Rugby has Standards’ Keane – has been keening and yahooing for Billy Vunipola to be banned from a grand big rough rugga game in the land of the Geordie Knot: a case of Billy K bringing Holier than Thous to Newcastle.
Billy K, you see, is not liking Billy V: for ‘liking’. Funny enough, Billy K has taken a vow of monastic silence, kept his personal Trappist shut, as it were, on the Connaught Ranger, one Bundi Aki. No belly-aching from Billy K. about Bundi-Aki for also ‘liking’. Surely, Shirley no turning Lundy on Bundi, now !)
The Siege of Lucknow (1857), alas, was not without its ironies, my iron liege,. Take the casualties: while there was a nice, rounded off figure of 2,500 given for the casualties on the tender, open and generous side of the impish Imperialists, no number crunching, alas, for the Curry Munchers. Indeed, so vast were the slurry pits into which their blasted corpses were hurriedly dumped, that none of the numerate nabobs on the anti-nationalist side could be arsed counting them.
This haughtiness-as-it-ought-to-be-ness came back to poke poor Have-a-go Havelock in the bum. Having tried, and tried in vain to effect numerous evacuations of Lucknow, sadly, his bowels finally succumbed to uber-evacuation in the end: he died of dysentery. Medically, the technical term is ‘ of the unutterable scutters’. And so, goodness gracious me, he himself was subsumed in the subsoil of the Subcontinent.
Havelock has a prominent place in all of the series of The Flashman Papers, novels set in the same sub-continent. He is given the nickname “Gravedigger.”
A ‘havelock’ , too, is the name for the piece of cloth that hangs from the back of a kepi to protect the neck from sunburn. (As Jeff is heppy to explain: a kepi is a military cap with a circular top and a horizonal peak).
Already a gap in the military millinery market in DUPlin will have been spotted by the half-crown forces coming south.
RED NECKS = FAT CHEQUES
The hard-headed biz whizzs of the Wee Six
Know tricks in kicking agin the papal prix
We’ll have a stock
Of d’wee havelock
Loose climate change equals a quick fix.
Meanwhile Mutt, the Belgravian-wannabe, even while charading as the lapdog biting the bulldog, managed to cobble together a book for chavs and chav-nots alike about the Shavian one as recently as only last year. This prompted a plump invitation to slump on to the hallway of his inner Preacherman, for to appear as a holy guest of the pulpit faction in St. Patrick’s Cathedral (borrowed), DUPlin 8. Prior to his going on his Out-Reacher of a carefully chosen host-to-host tour of the US of A.
Did, one wonders he chance to look up at (gulp) Lucknow?
-UDR.
UDR ?
Spoiler Alert, Doyler, re what Mutt’s muttering to Jeff !
UDR, erm, equals:
-Unremarked Designer Racism.
Cue, a whole truckload of shared chuckles to be unbuckled by both Jeff and Mutt.
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT: TO BE CONTINUED
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