A!: Aaaghhh…This is awful! It’s like a noose is being tightened round my neck. I passed Ian Paisley two days ago and I’ll swear he made a movement across his throat with his hand.
A2: Calm down – you’re imagining things. Remember you are a strong leader. You are in charge of the DUP. You are Woman.
A1: Yes, but so is Fiona Hepper Woman. She’s a former employee of mine, and did you see what she said to that committee?
A2: You mean, Fiona Hepper, that was in charge of the renewable heating scheme? Actually, she wasn’t really your employee. She’s a public employee.
A1: Of course she was my employee. She worked for DETI and I was in charge of DETI. Whose side are you on, anyway?
A2: Yours, yours. As your alter ego I have no choice.
A1: Stop trying to bully me, then. That Fiona Hepper is claiming I wanted to start shelling out money to farmers and the like long before DETI – my department – had costed the scheme.
A2: And did you?
A1: Of course I did. I wanted to give certainty to the market.
A2: Give what to the what?
A1: Certainty to the market. I wanted farmers to take up the scheme. All I was doing was letting them in on a good thing.- money for old rope – or new boilers at least. Lots of money.
A2: Was that a wise thing for you to do? When the whole matter hadn’t been costed?
A1: Wasn’t the money at that stage coming from London? It wasn’t going to cost anybody here a penny.
A2: Yes, but London is the capital of the UK. And we’re part of it. You’ve said so yourself about the Brexit vote. We’re part of the UK.
A1: Listen, whose side are you on?
A2: Yours, yours. (Sotto voce: Nach mór an trua!)
A1: What did you say?
A2: Ah – it’s a French saying. It means ‘Leadership is bred in the bone’.
A1: You can say that again. But I’m telling you – that Fiona woman has my nerves all jaggy. Does she think I’m Sammy Wilson?
A2: That would be very rude of her.
A1: Not in looks. I mean Wilson thinks there’s no such thing as global warming. I’m a passionate campaigner against global warming – that’s why I grabbed this scheme from Britain.
A2: That’s true.
A1: I did my best to save the planet, and now people are saying I made a Horlicks of things.
A2: Well it is going to cost people here an awful lot of money.
A1: That’s not my fault. I took the cap off it to give the whole thing market credibility.
A2: Mmm. But weren’t there reports of farmers saying “This Cash –for –Ash thing – it’s incredible!”
A1: They meant it was an incredibly leaderly scheme.
A2: Or maybe incredibly badly designed.
A1: Rubbish. The farmers all told me I’d done the right thing by removing the cap from the scheme.
A2: Well, they would, wouldn’t they? £1.60 for every £1.00 invested – money for near to nothing and the chicks for free.
A1: What did you say?
A2: Just a line from an old song.
Al: Well stifle the old songs. If I can’t trust my alter ago, who can I trust?
A2: Ian Paisley? …Ah here – that was a joke. You are the strong leader of a great party.
A1 (wiping away tears): You really think so? You really think I could lead my party to another resounding election victory?
A2: (under her breath) Sin sceal eile.
A1: What did you say?
A2: I said ‘Una duce, una voce.’ You are the undisputed leader of a great party. You are the DUP. Now staunch the tears. We still need to decide on a campaign song.
A1: ‘The Green Grassy Slopes of the Boyne?
A2: Too obvious.
A1: ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’?
A2: Mmm – maybe not. Nazi overtones. What about ‘Yesterday’? Sort of wistful, with that line ‘Yesterday, all my troubles were so far away’…Ah come on, Arlene, it was a joke, no, put down the poker, honestly…
(Exeunt stage left, A2 pursued by red-hot-poker-wielding ex-First Minister. Lights go down and we hear the poignant strains of ‘Money Can’t Buy Me Love’)
It’s hard not to smile.
Brilliant !!
Who’d have thought that Arl the Snarl could be the font of so much fun, Esteemed Blogmeister?
Let’s hope you are not giving a, erm, sausage to fortune in the event of the former Iníon Ní Cheallaigh getting the bright idea of trying to fry her alter ego on a (gulp) wood burner itself.
Your mention of ‘Yesterday’ prompted one to turn back to the Friday edition of The Unionist Times where their lead editorial (!) was the cause of laughter too; only this time, alas, the mirthless kind .
-Northern Ireland Election: a bunch of ould crocs.
So, TUT is about go into uber-tut-tut mode and reach for the hoary old but now new AIG-sponsored plague on both their houses?
Well, no.
Eh?
What? The Organ of Rex Accord is peddling a piece of (gasp) truthiness as the truth in the news?
Of course, not. What, then?
So, TUT is about to step outside the box and, for a change, give the leader who is not in favour of being seen as the feeder of crocs a right good rollicking?
Well, actually no, neither that.
Eh (2)?
In fact, the funny thing is: surprise, surprise, twas the crocs who actually get the bx kicked out of them.
-The patent insincerity of Sinn Féin’s dismissive response to Foster may also bring to mind the ida of‘crocodile tears’.
Eh?
‘Insincerity’?
Now, at last, we are, if not burning wood chips then surely, erm, sucking diesel. For, with these weasel words (to keep with the A to Z of zoological vocabulary) what The Unionist Times is engaged in here is extending a (gasp) ‘Fáilte Ui Cheallaigh’ to the introduction of ‘crocs’.
A ‘Fáilte Uí Cheallaigh’ /Kelly’s Welcome being the warmest kind of welcome in Ye Olde Irelande, to the re-introduction of The Irish Language Act to muddy, as it were, the swampy waters of the crocodile.
Here’s how the dodge works for those natural born linguisitc supremacists, the Yunes on both sides of the Black Sow’s Dyke.
‘Crocs’ bring to mind – nudge, nudge – ‘crocks’. ‘Crocks’ brings to mind – wink, wink – crocks of gold which in turn can only mean one thing:
-Here be Leprechauns.
Leprechaun, having been hinted into the debate, oops, conversation, by the Yunes, North and taken up by the Yunes, South, brings us thus, by a commodius vicus of recirculation, to the H block of words, of which Hypocrisy is the most distasteful .
And, of course, no patois on planet Earth since the fall of the Tower of Babel has become so entwined with the concept of hyprocicy as the Patois of Pat, i.e. Leprechaun.
Thus, the curious (!) insertion of the word ‘insincerity’ above (hey ‘insincerity’, say hi ! to hypocrisy !) into the increditorial:
-The patent insincerity of Sinn Féin’s dismissive response to Foster….’.
So, now, those of you who thought that the Shinners were being impostors by being not just insincere but (gulp) patently insincere in dismissing Missy Forster, let ye be thinking again, surely, before the short nights of Meitheamh do be starting to draw out and there to be no need no more for all this fuss about non-fossil fuel and all. For truly do they do be loving her, entirely..
THE UN’s the ONE for FUN
Forget the Union Jack on the towel rack
Even the slack in the shack out the back
Forget the crocs
Forget the crocks
Twas TUT hacks who invented ‘craic’ !
There’s always that old Dexy’s Midnight Runners track (euphemism for that old Nazi Marching Powder “speed”!) …. “Come on Eileen………er Arlene” …might put a bit of amphetami….er….. “pep” in her step, again !!!!…..Yoicks ….whizzo !!!.
For a DUP campaign song Rammstein’s “Du Hast Mich’ springs to mind…
excellent Jude.
excellent Jude, and the humour that goes with it,but the real message comes out.
Thank you, Sarah…