As I sat on top of the chicken house yesterday in the pouring rain with my neighbour Adolf O’Goonassa, we watched an old man who could hardly walk or talk staggering through the fields with a creel of fish.
‘Tis true what Danny Healy (Rae) says, he shouted against the downpour. Only the Man above is in charge of the weather.
Adolf reached into the póca of his weskit, withdrawing a pouch of tobacco and a small bottle of whiskey.
Do you know phwhat Bock? he muttered in the softest, most melodious Irish anyone ever heard.
Phwat? I replied.
‘Tis a bad sign that the ducks are in the nettles.
And so it was. A bad sign indeed, because even though a Kerry village pines for its missing idiot, our national parliament gains one more ignoramus. Kilgarvan’s loss is Ireland’s loss.
On the other hand, you might say that Danny Healy’s (Rae) contribution to the climate change debate was a master-class in the power of buffoonery (if by contribution you mean bluster and if by debate you mean denial). You could almost hear them tuning up those banjos back in Kerry as Danny rounded on Eamon Ryan and told him that one year the sun didn’t shine in Ireland at all at all, and another year we were drowned out of it. And in 1740, three million of us died from famine at a time when there were only 2.5 million in the country and there were no combustible engines then either as Danny reminded us.
Twice, Danny pointed out that there were no combustible engines back in those days long ago.
Squeal like a pig? No. Eamon kept a straight face throughout Danny’s lecture on a subject he plainly knew nothing about and in a way it was hard not to shed a nostalgic tear. There was a time when every bar in Ireland had some bombast ready to hold forth on any subject in return for a pint or a cigarette.
Of course Danny, no more than the rest of his political crew, isn’t that easily bought. It will take a lot more than the offer of a small whiskey to sway him, and that’s why, after displaying to the world the boundless unplumbed depths of his ignorance, he brought his rant around to local matters.
Danny made it plain that he sees no difference between weather and climate and besides, there’s nothing we can do about it down here on Planet Earth. God above, you see, controls the weather and when it rains, the best thing the government could do would be give maybe €200,000 to drain the river at Glenflesk, naturally enough using diggers supplied by Danny’s plant-hire firm which was specially set up by God to protect Kerry from his wrath.
It probably plays well enough around Kenmare and Kilgarvan, and what else would Danny care about? This, after all, is the same man who suggested that pub owners should be able to give their customers certificates allowing them to drive with excess alcohol in their blood, and just like the flooding and the diggers, this suggestion had nothing whatever to do with the fact that he owns a pub himself.
And still they elected him.
Let’s hope, when he arrives to save the poor drowned people of Glenflesk, his engines aren’t too combustible.
