Most faceless and indeed, facebookless folk from A to Z who live offstage in the Anonymous Zone are familiar with phone topping up. But it is left, in the main, to the lot of the privileged few who bask in the loo-like limelight of their own importance who are versed in the asked-for benefits of phone tapping.
DUPlin’s Garda Phone Tapping Unit, which is known in-house as the F.A. Unit and never more so than in the incident being eavesdropped upon here. F.A. stands, of course, for the obvious (think Dublin, think Monaghan).
But it also stands for the Fred Astaire Unit. And for reasons best known to one of their betters, who, back in the day of 1983, upped the ante and opted to tap the phones of B.A. of the Sunday Dependent and Auntie Geraldine Kennedy, the then tut-tutting editor of T.U.T.
-For their ‘anti-national’ views.
Which ‘anti’ ? Which ‘nation’?
Ceisteanna maithe, gan dabht. Freagraí níos fearr fiú, freisin.
Thankfully, this sad, bad and squalid affair came, for once, to a happy concussion. Buoyantly, both the defiant ones, Adam and Eve got nicely compensated for being eavesdropped (being divvied 20 thou squids) which indubitably went on topping up their telephone loads.
B.A. of course is an acronym for many entitites but one shall confine oneself to just two. One needs no introduction to the obvious but the other stands of course, for a staunch supoorter of same, one, Bruce Arnold.
Of late Bruce has been too much in the shade (82, in fact) but happily he made a thigh-slapping return to form in the raging pages of the Daily Telegraph on the mainland, a sister organ of the Sunday Dependent in Occidental England. And, like the latter, always game for a belly laugh:
-Noisome to see you, Brucie, to see you noisome ! .
Take it away, B.A.:
‘This is tough right now, being a proud and loyal British subject who has lived in, and loved Ireland for mroe than 60 years’, he wrote in the piece, headlined ‘Bought by Brussels, little Ireland’s ridiculous leaders have landed it in a Brexit crisis’.
Sadly, this brings to mind the same editorial line which was sob-edited by the country singer Eddy Arnold (are they related?) back in 1949.
‘I’m throwing rice at the girl that I love
Just after she said ‘I do’
I’m throwing rice wth a smile on my face
But my heart is breaking in two.
And Bruce Arnold, the fellow of The D.T.. who bellowed at the T.D.s , is now in no way being loose with his choice of words: not only does he love Occidental England but he, Il Duce of Decorated Hacks, have been loved in return, and even in grievous danger of being Knighted, unlike Eddy, his Unrequited Namesake.
For, as well as scooping innumerable news stories B.A. has, in his day, scooped not a few awards for his words.
Come hither, a chairde, and consider this jolly good list:
-He, B.A., is an honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Dubln; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by UCD and an OBE by U No Hoo, former High Queen of Honkers.
–Didn’t he do well !
Akin, in a way, to Bruce Grobeller among the grovellers.
The last award on this list, which tends to list towards the POSH (port out, starboard home) is easily explained: his OBE was awarded for ‘his contribution to Irish journalism’ (?), and maybe because he’s a Londoner.
Here’s another comical quote, blending both foresight and hindsight, from Bruce’s go in The Daily T. at the Benedict Arnolds of Occidental England and which is truly a cracker:
–Whatever faults the British may have, they understand independence and freedom. I can understand why they mock the ridiculous behaviour of these two men.
Cracked like a true Chin Féiner, Brucie !
It is only meet and just, Justin, to mention that Bruce was not the only Anglo-Saxon Sasanach with
a furrowed brow to till a less than lonely and till-ringing furrow in his adopted country, Occidental
England. Back in the day, like, when the Troubles began to bubble over, north of the Black Sow’s
Dyke.
Vied this dara Sasanach did with B.A. in his ginormous hat-doffing admiration of the other B.A.
His hat was, metaphorically speaking, a Homburg, the type that Anthony Eden wore in the paradise
of the Empah upon which the Sun had then never set, going forward, in fairness.
Little wonder the loyal corgis on the streets of DUPlin barked in a unified orgy of adoration, a phrase which parodied a mantra of a former era :
-Up Kev !
A wordsmith he, dieser Meister des Englischen der Hausfrau understandably, to the extent of its being a rule of thumb, was no great shakes at the sums. Thinking that 14 minus 18 = 16.
Alas, all good things do tend to come to an end, both sticky and nonsticky. Thus, a second parody was in the backpassage of passing Time, to be paraded out, from the lock-step jaws of the abruptly disloyal corgies:
–We thought we’d got Utopia, but all we got was Dev’s myopia.
To:
–We thought we’d got Bloom’s Dublinshire, but all we got was Kev’s anti-Golda Meir.
It was noticed that the corgies this time of Times were decorated with pink ribbons, around the
neck, and with dark sky-blue and white ribbons around the tail, all tied with the distinctive knot of
the Not-an-inch Jo’s in the McHen Party.
Summarily, was Ireland’s most vigilant watch-dog banished to the doghouse.
–Tabhair Brú Chaoimhín air.
There, he has been left to languish and contemplate the vast swathes of the known world on the
wall maps which have been compelled by the native microbes to discard the robes of the Union
Jack. Swathes, it was chillngly noted, where most of the inhabitants were lacking in ear-lobes.
Chivvied Kev on one of his many miffed moments :
-In no way will I ever bow to this morphing of the perfectly named city of Bombay to a name
whose first syllable rhymes with bum:
– Mumbai, my arse !
Or words to that effect.
Even as he tosses a coin of the realm to see in which underwhelming place he will spend his next
vacation where a vacination may or may not be required.
-One must away from his mackerel-crowded city of Malone, Molly and Mulligan, Biddy: it is
patently no city for not so old men. The young in one another’s arm, birds in the trees, caught in that
sensual music, all neglect monuments of unageing intellect, comme Kev, c’est moi, whom the fish,
flesh or foul dullards dismiss as The Leicester Bigot.
Glancing at the wall-map, he spies with his little Myers eye a preposterously named imposter of a city which he pronounces as:
-Istanbulsh !
He considers his next option: flying by Constellation to Constantinople.
-Also, out !
For he, the watchdog of the public, is both noble and constant in his devotion to the true original placename – the tip-top topography – which leads him to proclaim:
-Let’s go ! I’m sailing to Byzantium on the good ship Loyalistpop, leggo-assembled at Harland and
Wolff-Wolff.
To conclude on a happy note, for Bruce Arnold’s ears only.
During the week, two Epsteins made the news, one good, one bad, on the one day: one called Brian, the other called Jeffrey, both jolly good felos de se, each in his own way.
Brian, because of the Golden Julibee of the heel to toe totemic pedestrian crossing on Abbey Road.
Jeffrey, whose passing brought forth a Cyborg-sized sigh of relief from the bowels of Windsorschloss : no more buck of a pederastian crossing to stop here !
-Is ait an mac an Sailor-o, go háirithe más Vice-Admiral é.
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT : TO BE CONTINUED
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