Surviving Saint Patrick's Day

"I'm not on speaking terms with half of the people here because I tell them what they don't want to hear while they stand around like a bunch of gladhanding, back-slapping jackasses congratulating each other on what they don't understand to begin with."
- shy and retiring film composer Jerry Fielding.

By Charley Brady

"Oh no", he said with a certain winsome hopelessness in his voice. "It couldn't possibly be that time of the year again, could it?"

But it is. Yes, we're on the slippery slope to St. Patrick's Day.

Along with perhaps Christmas Day it is the one time of the year when I want to spend it under the duvet in my bat-cave and never want to wake up again. Well, that and Christmas.

Let me be honest: I've never "celebrated" this momentous salute to nothing and I have never been in another country on that day where, for all I know, they do it right.

It's probably great fun in New York, Chicago and Auckland (twitter us about that one, Mary Harney) but here it's just a day for me to avoid.

Well, that is unless you want to see hundreds of rug- rats running around in the afternoon.

Unless you like parades.

Unless you like to go to the shop for a carton of milk and have to do an army course over go-chairs and screaming uncontrollable brats in order to get there.

Unless you want to break down into uncontrollable screaming yourself because every body is waving a little flag in your face.

That's just the afternoon; and you can kind of reluctantly go along with that if you're a masochist. Or have children and like parades, which I guess is the same thing, really.

The evening, though; ah, the evening: you have to contend with gobshites that you wouldn't give the time of day to yelling into your face: "Ah, sure, aren't we great for the craic all the same?"

You have to avoid idiots who are likely to be falling- down drunk, want to fight you and throwing up in a corner that someone in the morning will have to clean up for them. Not even necessarily in that order, mind you.

The "fighting Celts"; are you kidding me or what? We can't seem to have a normal sociable drink on this nonsense of a day. Not here in any case. No, we have to get steamed to the gills, talk about what we will do if that **** looks crooked at us again. We have to be unable to have a conversation that in any sane world would pass as normal language and then get the fists out to show how tough we are.

The "fighting Celts" who, when sober, can't even raise the gumption to kick out a useless Government.

Ah, but sure it's all great craic, isn't it?

We'll have every jackass from Galway to Dublin doing a drunken rendition of "Danny Boy" (a great song but not the way that these clowns deliver it) or even worse: singing pseudo-rebel crap by the Wolfe Tones, a band that should have definitely been asked to decommission their instruments at least a decade ago.

In the scheme of things I have to think that Saint Patrick's Day is well up there on my list of things to avoid - along with guys who carry screwdrivers on a normal night out; having a hernia; Bono and Geldof; listening to people telling me that we have to let in asylum seekers on human rights grounds even though they have openly said that they are extremists; listening to feminists who inexplicably hate Kathryn Bigelow because she's become successful in doing something that is normally associated with male film directors; and imbeciles that still think that the Green Party is the party of principle.

And now this year we have it for a week, a Saint Patrick's Festival and even for a grump like myself I have to tell you that tonight's coverage from King John's Castle in Limerick was so damned impressive that I was sorry I wasn't there. Great music and

I'm a sucker for really good fireworks - or are we supposed to call them pyrotechnics these days? - it doesn't matter, it looked absolutely marvellous.

So that was a plus item. Also, you naturally have to admire those who put in time at organising everything. It's just not for me.

And there is one thing to be said for Saint Patrick's Day. At least all of the useless politicians, who are laughing their heads off at the gombeens who still won't kick them out, are gone from the country. So it might actually run better for a change.

Well, it is that time of the year again that we all look forward to. It's that time of the year when they have all taken their junket money and headed off to all points of the compass in order to get large amounts of alcohol down their thick necks; stuff their faces with the kind of cuisine that they probably can't even pronounce and soak up a few rays while pretending that - sure Gob and begorrah! - we're a great little nation all the same. Have a sprig of the 'oul shamrock while you're listening to this, if you will, sor.

From yesterday (Friday) you have Brian Cowen. Good luck with that. Pretty ironic that a national leprechaun museum gets opened on the same day that our latest scandal with the Heath Service breaks. It's no big deal, really: just 58,000 X-ray reports at Tallaght Hospital that nobody bothered to look at. There's one person dead through this absolute negligence, two delayed diagnoses and thousands who are now unsure and facing a really worrying time over whether or not their results have been dealt with adequately.

We also have thousands of referral letters from GPs to the hospital that nobody bothered to answer.

Although they have, since the story broke, began to dribble in. Dr. Siobhan Kearns for example is now getting answers to letters she wrote concerning her patients in 2003!

On RTE radio yesterday she said: "You could have bone cancer. How are we going to know that [without getting an answer back]? We have no way of finding a bone cancer in general practise.

"We could send them for blood tests but, for example, they could need an MRI.

"It's going to cost anything from €200 to €500. Again, are you going to send someone on the off-chance they might have bone cancer when they don't have the money?"

She also said: "It's a two- tier system really. It's a horror but it is happening so often. It's embarrassing and frustrating and it's a disgrace."

Yet we have Ireland's biggest leprechaun, Death's Head Mary Harney the Health Minister, swanning around New Zealand with her husband at the taxpayers' expense and staying in five star hotels for fifteen bloody days and nights because she has a four minute speech to give and - ahem - talk to New Zealanders about THEIR approach to taking care of the sick.

How about talking to the likes of Dr. Kearns, Health Minister - you wouldn't have to fly half-way around the world to do it - but then that might mean that yourself and the hubby would miss out on yet another holiday in luxury at our expense.

When contacted on her latest junket about - and we naturally doffed our caps at this point - perhaps cutting short her trip to the other side of the world as we have a real crisis going on here she of course ruled that one out completely and said that she would be dealing with it "remotely".

Well, for once she actually told some truth. She has to be one of the "remotest" and most shameless chancers that a country of shameless chancers has churned out.

That's saying something. After all, she's over there promoting Irish business for Paddy's Day (that's why she's taking fifteen bloody days - and don't forget the husband) to bring jobs into the country.

Well, it doesn't need a leprechaun's crystal ball or whatever they use to tell you how that will turn out. You only have to recall previous hard-neck freebies to Florida and South Africa where the sum total of the jobs she brought in amounted to a hugely sublime big fat "Zero"! A bit like herself, actually.

One of our even less lovable, if that's possible, leprechauns, the grinning little disgraced toe-rag who was chairman of the now-notorious Anglo Irish Bank, has now missed his deadline for explaining where all his loot now is, appears to be finally being pursued to answer questions on the €106,000,000 loan he awarded himself in order to plough into his other ventures, many of which have gone belly up.

Well, join the rest of the country, Seanie. I don't believe for one second that a white collar gouger like yourself will ever do time but at least you know now what it's like to be having that white collar felt for a change.

Even more hilarious was your fellow chancer David Drumm - yes, of course he was a leading light in Anglo Irish Bank as well. He is now happy out in Cape Cod, away from the prying eyes of the evil press. He owes the bank €8.3 million (a relatively small sum for these guys) and says reports from the beach and the sea that attempts to get it back are simply "harassment" and leaving him "stressed".

No, Drumm; let me explain this to you in words that even a hard-necked thick like you will understand. When the bank pursues the likes of myself for owing them a couple of hundred euros and threatens me with all-sorts, that's "stress". When I don't have the corruptly gotten shekels to get me out of this nut house and onto Cape Cod that's when I feel "harassed".

What you and your like are going through as you gather for cocktails in the sun is a whole different game altogether.

By the way, I hate to say this but I was right again: regarding last week and Bertie Ahern's promise to buy a few 'oul pints out of his lotto winnings, OF COURSE the denizens of The Beaumont House, one of his local watering holes, were lining up to get their pints.

Was it in the play "A Man for all Seasons" that one character is asked what he sold out for?

I can't remember but as far as I recall, when told that it was in order to be put in charge of Wales the reply is something like: "Oh dear. To sell your soul for the whole world gains you nothing; but for Wales?"

As predicted, our lot sell out for much, much less.

It's a National Waxwork Museum of Chancers that we need here. You would a venue the size of Croke Park for that on.

By the way, why wasn't Little Wille O'Dea there to open the leprechaun museum? I hear that he has some time on his hands at the moment.

Hope to see you all again next week, where you can all buy me beer and stick it on Bertie's tab. And by the way... ...Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net