Well fuck me.

This is a day that will be taught about in history lessons to future generations?  This is a day that we will fondly reminisce over in future years?

To those of you abroad who are missing out on this momentous occasion, I feel sorry for you, for we in Ireland are the chosen ones.  You must be devastated.

You see, we have been sent a letter by an 82 year old member of the Hitler Youth!  Wow!  We are truly honoured.

Old Joe Ratzinger himself has written to apologise for the mayhem and chaos that his followers have caused in the past.  Apparently though it isn’t all their fault.  No.  We are to blame.

The cause of all the child abuse, rape, and general carnage was caused by our secularisation.  I can understand where he is coming from here.  If we had stuck with the good old days and if we still treated the clergy with the deference and adoration that they deserved, then none of this would have come to light.  We would still be stepping off the pavement into the gutter to let a priest pass and we would never have dreamt of questioning their little hobbies that involved our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.  It never would have occurred to us to demand the resignation of the bishops and cardinals who ran one of the most efficient and organised paedophile rings that the world has ever seen.

I really feel honoured that he has written.  As an outsider to his flock, I do feel a little left out, as the letter is not being read to me personally.  That honour is strictly reserved for those few who, despite everything, still believe in Catholic Church Incorporated.

I am delighted to hear that Joe is sending over his minions to visit us all and to apologise in person.

I have it on good authority that they will be bringing with them many thousands of mirrors, because staring at our reflections seems to be the only way out of this mess.

Yes. 

It truly is a very historic day for Ireland.

According to his theory, time varies according to speed, and the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time passes.

I would like to add a little codicil to his theory, and state that the older you get, the faster time passes.

I remember the hazy lazy days of my youth, where a day would seem endless.  This was great, because by the time summer holidays came to an end, I had forgotten what school was like, as it was so long since I had been there.  The other side of the coin was that school terms lasted for fucking years, or so it seemed.

Now that I have racked up a few years under my belt, things are different.

Days are flying past.  It’s not exactly as though my days are packed with hectic activity which always seems to make time pass a little quicker.  On the contrary, I life a slow life – a nice lie in, followed by a mooch around the Manor. Maybe I’ll wander off for a bit of hunting, of maybe I just won’t. You would imagine that I would be bored with nothing to fill my days, but the problem is that I don’t have the days to fill.  The fucking things are flying past like carriages behind an express train.

It’s always Saturday in this place.  At least, that’s the way it seems. It is always either Saturday, or it’s just been Saturday, or it’s just about to be Saturday.  Saturdays are fucking haunting me.  I wouldn’t mind, but it’s not particularly my favourite day of the week.

I could have sworn that yesterday was Saturday, but in fact it’s tomorrow.  It’s back again.  Where the hell are Monday, Tuesday and the others gone?

The months are playing tricks on me too.  I could have sworn that this was the beginning of February, but apparently we are over half way through March.  I noticed today that the Christmas decorations are still up in the village.  That’s fine by my mind, because Christmas was last month.  But in actual fact it was three months ago.  Where in the name of all that’s holy did those three months go?

Maybe this is the answer to what happens to us after we die?  Maybe time just passes at an infinite speed?  I don’t know exactly what the effect of infinitely fast time would be?  One instant it’s now and then it’s a million years in the future?  Who knows?

But I bet it involves getting stuck in a Saturday somehow?

You can go to the middle of the Sahara Desert and get incredibly detailed photographs of what?  Fucking sand.  That’s what.  Who wants incredibly detailed photographs of sand, except maybe a crab?  And I doubt they use Google Earth much.

Some years ago, when they brought in those damned Nanny Laws about smoking here, we started taking our holidays in Norn Iron.  They were civilised up there, and allowed smoking in the pubs, and the Guinness was cheaper.  We stayed in a lovely quiet little spot in a small village within crawling distance of two pubs.  It was lovely.

As I said, it’s a very small village, but guess what?  They not only have detailed photographs, but they have the whole fucking area covered with their Street View.  I even found the house we used to stay in.  It looks small, but it was lovely and cosy, with a big log fire, and Sandy was welcome too.

Move south of the border to Real Ireland, and what do you get?  Sweet fuck all.

Google Earth seem to have stuck us at the bottom of the list.  They do have a few areas covered all right.  My own gaff is well photographed, but what the fuck use is that?  I know what my place looks like, and they had a fucking liberty photographing it anyway without asking permission.  I didn’t even get a chance to mow my lawns first.

Suppose I want to look at Ireland’s most popular hunting tourist spot though?  This is what I get when I try to look at Killarney.

I need Google Earth.  I need to plan my hunting trips holidays.  I need detail, and all I get is a fucking smudge.

Surely Ireland isn’t that hard to find?  For fuck’s sake we are a fairly large island just to the west of the Isle of Man.  We are even big enough to have our own postage stamps.

Come on, Google Earth.

What the fuck is keeping you?

It has depressed me beyond your wildest imagination.

It started with a simple visit to the coffee shop.  There were some tourists who pissed me off so I decided to send them to meet their ancestors.  I nipped back to the car, and then it happened.  I realised that I had left all my hunting equipment at home.  I drove home as fast as I could but by the time I got back to the village the feckers had gone.

This has never happened to me before.  My quarry has always ended in the quarry, and the vision of those bastards who got away will haunt me to my dying day.

I have decided it’s because I am getting old.

I knew this day would come eventually, and have already made the appropriate arrangements.  I am already a member of Dignitas and have informed my solicitor that I am quite prepared to make my own choice about the date and manner of my exit from this life.  The one thing I refuse to even contemplate is the vision of myself sitting in the corner of some Old Folk’s Home, dribbling, pissing and shitting myself and mumbling incoherently about the good old days.  And if anyone says that is the way I am now, you can go fuck off.

My arrangement are quite comprehensive.

I already have my open ended one way tickets to Switzerland.  I need two tickets, because I have to be accompanied, apparently.  I have arranged a surprise trip for Herself here.  She has always said she wanted to visit Switzerland.  There is no point in her returning to Ireland as, in the old Celtic tradition, I shall be burning my house to the ground before I leave, so I will be booking Herself into Dignitas at the same time.  Actually, rather than burning the house down, I shall be using Semtex and Nitro Glycerine as I intend to go with a bang.  I had better warn the neighbours to start looking for alternative accommodation beforehand?

So there you have it.

I shall be winding this site up shortly and shall be taking my one way trip.

…..

But there again, I have just remembered that trip to the coffee shop was after forty eight hours without sleep……

Maybe on second thoughts, I’ll postpone Switzerland for a while.

I’m off out now.

Today is the biggest day in the sporting calendar.

I went through the whole gamut – convent education up to primary level, and the the Brothers for the rest.  As a result, I had the full works when it came to the brain washing game.  I was taught that the Catholic Church had the only direct line to God, and that everyone else was doomed.  I was taught that the Catholic Church was the only voice of truth, and that religious people were next to God himself.

Then I grew up.

I began to think for myself.  I began to question an organisation that preached poverty, yet lived in sumptuous mansions and whose head lived in one of the most sumptuous palaces on the planet.  Then the simple truth hit me.  It was so simple that it was blindingly obvious – the Catholic Church has absolutely sweet fuck all to do with Christianity.  It is merely a big business whose main objective in life is to dominate and hold power.

That is why I can now watch the likes of Sean Brady without feeling anything other than contempt.

This slimeball is slithering and sliming around denying any wrongdoing despite that fact that he aided and abetted one of Irelands worst rapists and paedophiles.  The deluded cunt actually believes his own lies – that he is a man of God and can therefore do no wrong.  I feel sorry for the people who believe in his lies.  They are deluded too.

I don’t believe in religion.  I don’t believe in a God who demands rituals and praying by rote.  I don’t believe in a God who demands that we dress in certain ways, or chant meaningless words that have been memorised since childhood and have long since lost their meaning.

I believe in faith.  I have my own faith which is personal.  It doesn’t have any organisation behind it, because I don’t believe I should be taught how or what to believe in.

If I were a follower of Richard Dawkins [which I’m not] I would use the argument that the Catholic Church is the greatest proof that God does not exist, for if God existed, would he tolerate such a corrupt, deluded, power crazy mob using His name to further their ends?

Brady is a pathetic immoral nonentity who should be treated with the contempt that he deserves, along with all the rest of the mob who covered up the evils that the Catholic Church bestowed upon our nation, and most other nations on earth.  I couldn’t give a shit whether he resigns or not.  He is no more relevant to me than any other manager in any other big money making corporation on this planet.

Fuck him.

It was absolutely devastating, but these thing happen, and you just have to roll with them.

I have a favourite armchair.  I have had it for years, and it is extremely comfy.  It has nicely moulded itself to my contours and over the years, we have exchanged molecules so that I am part chair and it is part me.

I was sitting there minding my own business, when there as a bang, and I descended.

Yes.  I went down in the world.  The fucking chair had broken.

I spent a day in my lower position, pondering my lower perspective of the world and I felt rather nervous.  If one whatever-it-was can break, then so can the others.  Was it just a matter of time before I ended on the floor?

In the end, I upended the chair and cut the bottom off to take a look inside.  There was quite a lot in there.  There was a lot of dust and fluff, a dead mouse, two slices of pizza [I don’t know how they got there as I do not like pizza], several paper clips, €3.27 in small change and a broken spring.  Yup – the steel spring had snapped.

I haven’t the vaguest idea where you can buy those springs, so I decided that rather than drive myself demented trying to buy a new one, that I would repair the old one.  That is not quite as easy as you may think, as I don’t happen to have a welding torch, and anyway that just would have burned my chair to a crisp.

Any man worth his salt will tell you that one of the most vital things to have around the house is a Vice Grip and a few old wire coat hangers.

I set to work.

I’m quite proud of my efforts.

My binding tried to thwart me by slipping off, so I had to add some bits to stop any sideways movement, but as feats of engineering go, I think it’s up there with the Forth Bridge and the Hoover Dam?

I’m sitting back in my chair now.  I have gone back up in the world.

Spring may not have arrived yet, but it is fixed.

They have lost the run of themselves again though, in typical Irish fashion.

No longer content with a few blokes wandering down O’Connell Street following a couple of geezers wheezing on some bagpipes, we now have to have a fucking festival.

Again, I have nothing against festivals, and am quite prepared to watch a few very scantily clad women develop frostbite for my delectation, but let’s not lose the run of ourselves?  All these damned American ‘pipe bands’ and Rio de Janeiro type floats are just going too far.  There is nothing Paddy’s Day about them?

The Paddy’s Day Festival kicked off with a grand fireworks display down in Limerick.  I suppose that had to find some way of disposing of all the explosives they had found down there, and it makes a change from murdering each other, but has no one notice the incongruity of the title?  Paddy’s Day festival?  Paddy’s Day isn’t until Wednesday, for fuck’s sake, and they start it on a Saturday?

Once again, I have nothing whatsoever against people enjoying themselves, and if that were the extent of it, then let people get pissed and beat each other up in the streets – that’s part of modern society – but what really pisses me off are the crowd who haul in on the back of all this frivolity.

The main criminals are our Glorious Government.  This is their annual holiday at the taxpayers’ expense.  They see this as a glorious excuse to jet off the the far flung corners of the earth on the pretext of drumming up trade.  Has one single job ever been created by these jaunts?  Are foreign companies so fucking gullible that they will set up in Ireland because some fucking minister bought them a pint on Paddy’s Day.  Fuck off!!

I notice that these ‘trade missions’ are very nicely located.  Auckland?  Sydney?  New York?  Tokyo?  Very nice, at this time of year.  Most are heading off for a week or so, but of course Harney has to have 15 fucking days in New Zealand with her husband.  And these little jollies are all paid for by the taxpayer, who was recently told that there is no money left, and that we all have to pay extra to solve the financial crisis.

A small thing that irritates me about this time of year is the insistence of barmen at scribing a shamrock on the head of a pint of Guinness.  What the fuck is that all about?  Do they think we are all fucking tourists who are going to melt at the Irishness of it all?  They’ll be giving away fluffy leprechauns and floppy green hats next.  It is fucking embarrassing.  Wankers.

At this time of year, our local barman Pullit always draws a neat penis on the heads of the pints he pulls.

Now, he has the right idea.

Our Glorious Government categorically refuse to admit that they fucked up our economy with their tax breaks for builders, and their turning a blind eye to the bank’s activities.  Oh no.  It was the downturn in the global economy that caused our crash and they are all squeaky clean.

Our wonderful rail crowd refuse to admit that they fucked up an inspection of a railway bridge on the main Dublin to Belfast line [which subsequently collapsed].  Oh no.  It was fucking Global Warming!!!!

Our Catholic Church cannot understand why we are annoyed with them for covering up their decades of child abuse, buggery and rape.  It’s the fault of the media, or the work of the devil himself.  It’s nothing to do with them though.  Squeaky clean.

Every daily fiasco in this banana republic is blamed on someone else.  They spend more time trying to find who to blame than they do trying to find the root cause of the problem.

Why?

What is so fucking difficult about admitting you were wrong?

I got a comment on a piece I scribbled last week.  I thought it was spam because of the name of the user – The South of France Guide, and I sent a rather rude reply.  It transpired that they were a genuine commenter, and they wrote to me and said they were not best pleased.  I can’t say I blame them.  I wrote back and apologised, and I hope they accept that apology, though I can’t blame them if they don’t.

I hold my hand up and admit I made a mistake.  I was dog tired on the day, and that is a bad time to make hasty decisions.  I fucked up.

Or there again….

it could have been Global Warming?

Normally I would include people in this hall of fame because of an irrational desire just to have a good kicking.

This week’s candidate is more than that.  I have a rational desire to smack her one with the back of a shovel, but she still fits the bill, because she’s an ugly cow.

From the irrational point of view, I just hate her sulky scowl.  She rarely smiles, and has one of those voices that drones on on a monotone that is a guaranteed cure for insomnia, if it weren’t for the fact that she talks such bullshit.  This is a face that definitely requires a drastic piece of reshaping, preferably by non-surgical methods.

On the rational side, she is a fucking menace to the public.

Once again, there is another scandal in the health service.  One of the nation’s major hospitals has admitted that 57,000 x-rays were never reviewed by a consultant.  This has resulted in at least one death.  On top of that, they never bothered even opening 3,500 letters of referral from GPs.  This is a mess that is just another in a long litany of cock-ups, foul-ups and disasters in our health service, which all started when our Minister for Obesity Health decided to ‘reform’ the health service.  All she has succeeded in doing is to dismantle a system that worked reasonably well, and replace it with a bureaucratic nightmare that doesn’t function at all, but costs the state a staggering fortune per year.

The worst part about it is that she refuses to see what a monumental bollix she has made of the system.  She just keeps digging us deeper and deeper into this appalling mess.

And where is she now during this latest revelation about the x-rays?

She is swanning around New fucking Zealand with her husband at our expense. We are paying for her to have a nice little holiday on the pretext of ‘an official visit’ for Paddy’s Day which isn’t until next week.  God give me fucking strength.

This cow is a menace to society.

She is a corpuscle on the face of mankind.

Pass me my hob-nails.

I let it pass, as I let a lot of things pass [like No Smoking Day in the UK] because, well, I didn’t have much to say about it.  I just ignored it.

Yesterday I read a post by Sabrina Dent in which she comments on being mentioned as a “Top Female Web Designer” and takes umbrage, as well she might.

I do not understand the compulsion to gather us together and stick us in a special little ghetto. I don’t want to be praised for my gender; I want to be respected for my work on its own merits.

Now this did get me thinking, coming on top of Women’s Day as it nearly did.

What the fuck is this thing about segregating women?  I just don’t get it.

Women are different from men.  We know that.  They have soft bumpy bits, and they lack dangly bits, and they can’t park a car if their life depended on it, but apart from that they aren’t much different.  I grant you they can have babies where men can’t, but they’re welcome to that little trick.

Now Sabrina is a top class web designer, but why should she be celebrated just because she can’t park a car?  Why should there be a special day set aside for women just because they lack dangly bits and can’t read a fucking map?  Why should women have their own days and groups just because they can’t pee standing up?  I’m baffled.

There is no International Men’s Day, and that doesn’t bother me.  I don’t know what I would do with it anyway.  Would I have to walk around all day with no trousers on to show my pride in being a man?  International Women’s Day doesn’t seem to do much for women either.  It’s just a load of [lack of] bollox, if you ask me – which you didn’t. They waffle about it and it gets a mention in the papers [at the bottom left hand corner of page 16] but that is about the limit of it.  I don’t know why they bother with it at all.  It’s just an irritation.  It’s not as if women walked around all day with no clothes on to show their pride in being a woman?

Now there’s a thought…….