Bring back begrudgery
Posted on Thursday, June 1, 2006I went out with Jimbo this evening for a walk, mainly to get a bit of exercise, but also to walk the dogs. It was nice. It was a lovely evening, and we took a stroll down by the river, across the new bridge to the Clare side at Gillogue and back again by the old footbridge. Jimbo’s dog wandered along, as dogs do, sniffing other dogs’ arses and poking around in filthy ponds of slime for some tasty morsel, while Satan’s Terrier attacked Rotweilers and Rhodesian Ridgebacks. It was nice.
It was very nice, but it wasn’t the pub and so, realising the lateness of the day, we got a move on. We got home pretty damn quick and dunped the fuckin dogs so we could make a run for the bus.
There was a music session in the particular pub we went to, which was also a pleasant surprise, and Jimbo, being a bit of a musician, immediately wormed his way into the melee and grabbed a guitar, presumably in the hope of cadging a free pint. No such luck, I’m glad to say. Oh no. He had to pay, like the rest of us.
Anyhow, in the course of a chat with Martin the Nurse, it crossed my mind that we have lost an essential part of the Irish character, due to our preoccupation with wealth, and this is a pity. Our nation was founded on many great qualities, but surely the finest of all is the art of begrudgery, and I’m sorry to say we’re losing it. We are indeed. I’ve noticed the trend lately of wishing people well when they succeed at something, and I have to tell you, it’s out of keeping with our national character.
Even old codgers such as myself and Martin the Nurse are losing the knack, and found ourselves reduced to such banalities as look at him, look at him, he thinks he’s the fuckin business and I knew him when there wasn’t an arse in his trousers. This is fine. We need a certain base level of begrudgery to keep things even, but it’s hardly the art form our antecedents brought it to: Ha! Every one of them, goose milkers and heron stranglers!
And so emerged the idea that perhaps we could lead the world by establishing a new professorship in the University of Limerick. The Chair of Begrudgery. We could appoint a fellow with an appropriate-sounding name. An Dochtuir Micheal O Cinneide, Professor of Comparative Begrudgery.
There would be one drawback: no student would ever graduate, because the Professor couldn’t bear the thought, but hey, they’re only students. Fuck ‘em!
The University of Limerick in particular has a great reputation for placing its students in the workplace as part of their education, and I think this is a fine way to run a university, provided the students are studying something that might actually have some use in the commercial world. Oooooops! Don’t get me wrong here, now, y’all hear? I’m not suggesting that universities should become centres for vocational training. Far from it. I think a university should be able to accept every sort of madman, including people whose field of study has no practical use whatever. That’s what a university is, and I’m all for it. All I’m saying is this: the students who do actually get placed in jobs should ideally know how to do something. Yes, I realise this is a radical suggestion. Students who know something? What the fuck! Next thing you know, I’ll be demanding lecturers who can talk. It’s just that I was thinking about this embryonic department at UL: the School of Comparative Begrudgery, and it seems to me that there’s endless scope for placement. Banks, for instance, need a steady supply of listless, insolent 20-year-olds to sneer at poor people who want a mortgage. What better candidate than a student to do this work? County councils are crying out for ignorant halfwits to treat desperate people like shit. Well by golly, don’t we have a ready supply of retards who do this kind of thing free of charge anyway? We call them “Student” and it is thick plus drunk. (They’ll have to drop the drunk, I suppose, or at least tone it down a bit.)
Anyway, these are just details. We can have some high flier check them out later (fuck him - I remember when he hadn’t a rasher to fry). The main thing is that we’ve decided on the principle, and even developed the first specialisation: Applied Begrudgery.
Stumble it!
