Monday 8 December 2008

THE TAIL OF A CAULD-RIFED CUB

Dawn broke over the bog, revealing a vast, frozen, icy, barren tundra. Winter had nature by the throat and was holding on like a famished ferret. Know flora nor fauna grew on the icy and desolate waste land. Any young shoot, that dared poke its snout above ground, had the snotter cut off it by the frosty air and the cold, keening wind. It was like earth after a nuclear war, when some head banger in the Whitehouse went do-lally and pressed the red button. And yet--the bog still had beauty, a cold, sterile, terrible beauty, that could only be appreciated like someone like me with a poetic bend. Like auld Patrick Kavanagh, from Monaghn, I sea beauty in everything. A fragile flour, a weed, clinging to a wall like Spiderman, even cow dung has a secret beauty if you lie down on your belly and view it closely. Many a thyme, I have gazed into the face of a cow pat and scene the wonders of the Lord.
Back in my picturesque white cottage, my Sun Bon Jovi and I had just got up from us pits. We stood side by side at the sink, washing us feaces with ice cold h2o. We were both arrayed in us drawers and simmets. I was splashing the icy cold water, round my perfectly formed oval face, like an otter. Bon Jovi was more hesitant, he would throw a few droplets over his fat, round face and then back away, roaring, "IN THE NAME OF-GOD!" Back then too the sink, splash another few wee drops round his visage, do a wee dance in his unlaced hobnaild boots and let another wild roar, "IN THE NAME OF-GOD!" "Bon Jovi" I said "Don't be an auld woman. Wash that big face of yours and don't be coming over all precious and namby-pamby".
"This damned water is wild-cauld!" roared he who had sprung from my lions. "Listen boy" I yelled "I could heat the kettle, but I'm knot going two, I am going too bring you up in Spartan conditions to toughen you up and make a man out of you". Bon Jovi stamped his hobnailed boot like a wee diva and roared, "Listen Dumbo, I don't care how much cauld water you splash round your own big, red, bleezer of a face, but I have a delicate komplection, I should be washing in warm water and using moist-ter-iser". It was the word, moist-ter-iser that made me lose the head, I grabbed Bon Jovi by his auld bull neck and held his head in the sink 'till bubbles came up. Then I hauled him out, gave him a good shake and done the same again. The kicking of his hobnails was vigerous and frenetic, but I held on. When I was finished with him, he looked like a drowned big fat pup. I threw a towel I had made from a meel bag at him and yelled "Stop your sniveling, I wool make a man out of you my boy, If I have too drown you". Bon Jovi stood there, with his too knees nocking and shivering like a whipped greyhound. The eyes were standing in his head and he was gulping for air like a goldfish. He staggered too the korner and collapsed on to a meel bag. I looked over at him, he was wet from head to tow, you could sea his wee hart thumping, behind his simmet. Our eyes met and the cub stared at me, with a look of pure malevelant evil in his close set eyes. Bon Jovi bend over, boaked out some soapy water and roared at me. "Well, you've done it-now! You have water-boarded your only begotten sun. You have treated me worser that auld Bin Laden, you have treated me worser that the boys how did the nines elevens". I felt a pang of sorrow but replied. "It's for your own good, someday you wool thank me". "I think knot" yelled Bon Jovi. "After what has occured here today, I feel-obligated too take certain-steps". "What do you mean boy?" I said, with a note of fear in my voice. Bon Jovi threw the towel from him and said "You do no what you have done here today? I mean, you are aware of the consequences?" "What are you talking about" I stammered, with a trembling lip. Bon Jovi looked at me, pointed with a rigid digit and roared, "You have just breeched the Geneva convention. You have broken rule 9 paragraph 4, subsection 17, which states, "Any wan found too bee engaging in inhuman or degrading torture wool be arrested and tried at the court of human rights in the Hague".I stood-transfixed, what had I done? I had turned my good cat-lick home into another Guatamo Bay! I ran to hug the cub, but he avaded my embrace. He looked at me with a fly smile on his face and said "I wool lodge a complaint with the peelers, on my way two skool". "Bon Jovi" I shrieked "You wouldn't imform on your auld mammy-wood you?" "It's knot a case of-informing" said Bon Jovi, "I sea it as my civic duty, oh by the way, do you have a middle name like, Maggie or Nellie, I wool need too no when I lodge the complaint". "Bon Jovi" I yelled "Don't tell the police on your auld mammy. I wool do anything too make it up two you". Bon Jovi smirked and said "I sometimes find, that if I am given-money, a sizeable amount of-money, I seem too lose my-memory". "YES, YES" I cried, "How much do you want?" "I think a-Fiver wood suffice" said the fly wee get. "Here's a fiver" I yelled "Take it and we'll forget all about it". "KNot so fast--torturer" said Bon Jovi, "There is wan other little thing I want you too do, before we are quits". "Anything" I yelled "Anything, just tell me what it is and I wool do it" "Which is why the postman is telling all round Clougher, about finding me sitting buck naked in the water barrel outside. The wee brute made me sit in it for fore hours. When I finally climbed out, there was bits of me that could do with a good ironing. Oh, and another thing, I don't feed the blue-tits anymore-too many bad memories!

To get my book, Rosie Ryan's letters to Gerry Anderson, go to..
jpmcmenamin@gmail.com
GO NOW TO....
www.greatshowlastweekkid.blogspot.com

I'm still-foundered, still foundered-down below!

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