Shambles

In Irish terms today's shambles was like a puff of smoke from a magician top hat. Suddenly, it seemed we were once again in a state of chassis. But, why today ? Why not last Monday, or the monday before that. After all we've been in a state of financial and political breakdown for months. So why now? Its very mysterious. But then all life in Ireland seems to operate to inexplicable rules. At least as far as anyone outside the magic circle if Fianna Fail apparatchics is concerned. All we have to go on is the well founded belief that black is usually white and the normal state of affaires is like living on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
However this crises must have been a bit different because when I to visit my friend Maryln she was listening tio the radio and looking at the news. and because she's a kind woman she didn't ring an other mutual friend of the Fianna Fail persuasion because she would most certainly be in a state of emotional paralysis.
I am not so afflicted. It is my belief that there isin't a single politician in the country who hasn't been hopelessly compromised by the system - a system they have actively manipulated to their own financial advantage.It is no accident that their pay and conditions are so very good. After all , they fixed them-to their own advantage, behind the cloak of parliamentary privilege.And now these men and women - whom we elected in good faith, high step it into the political sunset, their bags stuffed with the sort of pensions only bankers can hope to exceed, in the back seat of their waiting state cars, chauffered by state paid drivers.
I don'tknow what should be done to them. The general feeling that hanging is too good makes me baulk - but only because I'm against capital punishment. But comunity service , on a permanent basis, until they've paid off the community they milked - now there might be some rough justice there.

Giggsy, Master of his universe

About a year ago , this dog, battered bruised and mad as they come, arrived in my garden. Starvation kept him lurking among the tubs. But nothing - not even the rapturous welcome from the resident dogs, would induce him to cross the threshold.By the time the New Year came, I had fallen completely under his spell - besotted beyond redemption I called him Giggsy and forgave him all his little ways,( up to and including his systematic destruction of the large black leather sofa that I am probably still paying off.) When he wasn't dismantling the furniture, he was taking the inside of the car apart. He has a particular aversion to hard black plastic which plays a larger part in the interior of the cheaper type of car than you might have thought.Giggsy has had a go at all the knobs- sometimes several times over. He is currently working on his third gear lever. Most of the time he has to be kept muzzled but then, I look at him and my heart melts.Off comes the muzzle and back he goes to his old ways.I have consulted widely on the problems he presents and the suggested " cures" range from applying really hot mustard to the sofa to shooting the dog. The mustard cure was only partially successful. Jessie, the tubular Jack Russell couldn't get enough of it. Then a man at the supermarket suggested whiskey. This remedy started with a good massage of the sofa and an equally vigorous rub of the teeth and gums of the dogs. All that happened was that the three licked their lips with every sign of delight. Then I had a brainwave - what was called for was a dose of moonshine - or poitin as its known in this neck of the woods. Strangely, none of the doggy men admitted to having any of the hard stuff handy.But eventually, I got some and marinated the sofa in the firey liquid. None of the dogs would go near it. They turned their backs on their favourite bed. I was delighted. Success at last. Then one night, I heard a suspicious tugging noise and creeping to the livingroom, I found that one of the dogs had been excavating the hole in the sofa and had tugged out the wads of poitin soaked cotton wool, completely undeterred by the powerful stench. I'm off now to get a tub of Vicks. According to a friend of mine this was enough to stop his family's labrador from eating them out of house and home. The boy Giggsy meanwhile is stretched out on the black armchair, his head draped over the armrest and a look of transcendental repose on his whiskery face.