It Occurs To Me:  A light-hearted look at 2024 - Part 2

                                  A laugh in Clonmany (June 2024)

I haven’t attended the Clonmany Festival for some time but it has been a rip-roaring success for over 60 years. 

Recently in Belfast, I had a great chat with ‘Gerry’, who worked as a barman during one festival a while back, while he was staying with a publican friend. Seamus Moore (whose ‘hits’ include Me Galluses and me Gansy, The PieBald Ass, Fluthered on the Moon, Having A Bit Tonite and The Transit Van) was one of the stars and ‘Gerry’ was intrigued to see Seamus pull up in Clonmany Square in a van with ‘Moore the Hoor’ emblazoned on its side. To top it all, the second van read ‘On Tour with Moore the Hoor’! 

                                        No surrender?

I was listening to RTÉ Radio while driving last Sunday, listening to the Galway v Armagh match. The commentator said at one juncture that as Galway were advancing, “..there was a line of Orangemen waiting to stop them!.” Maighdean Mhuire, says I, are we not a month early for a line of Orangemen stopping Tribesmen in their tracks?

                                         Slán go Foyle!  (July 2024)

Today they go to the polls in the North.  When Rishi ‘Soontobegone’ picked July 4th for the UK election, it may have been deemed panicky and hasty, but it showed a flagrant disregard for the voters in the Six Counties. Growing up in Carrigart, this week always saw a massive exodus from Belfast, Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh etc ahead of the 12th of July. That applied to every tourist corner of Donegal, but as a friend in the Foyle constituency said: “Our side will be fearful that some voters will be heading to the caravans, which will give the DUP an advantage, but we’re too cute for Rishi!” 

This  time tomorrow, poor Rishi could be heading to the caravans himself! 

                                          Dear Daithí

It’s been a while since I featured Dáithí Ó Sé, the Irish Examiner's Agony Uncle. As I said before, he’s my favourite comedian of them all…even though he’s been serious (I think?)..

Last Monday, a poor woman wrote: Dear Dáithí: “Help — my boyfriend's GAA obsession is wearing me down. I’ve started a relationship with a lovely guy I met online.

Dáithí Ó Sé, Frank Galligan’s ‘favourite comedian of them all’ 

He seems to be ticking all my boxes — he’s the right age, he doesn’t live at home with his mother, and he hasn’t ghosted me. The problem is he is obsessed with GAA. Daithí replied: “Outside of this man’s GAA fetish, he really seems to have a lot going for him and as you say he ticks all the boxes: right age; doesn’t live with his mother, and hasn’t ghosted you. You poor créatur, you’ve hit the jackpot without realising it. It’s amazing, sometimes when things are going so well in your life you try and find the negatives.” That got me wondering what a GAA fetish is. 

I’m sometimes to be found wandering about with my 1992 retro Magee tailored top and what's left of my ould Cusack Stand ticket…is that a fetish? Or am I morphing into Joe Biden?

                                             Hurlers on the ditch

A young Cork supporter after the 1973 Football All-Ireland was asked who his favourite Cork players were. He replied: "I have three favourites Jimmy, Barry and Murphy". It was lovely to see all three on the pitch at half time on Sunday! JMB led Cork’s 1999 All-Ireland SHC winning team onto the pitch before the final against Clare, and they all looked fit and healthy still. 

In a departure from normal protocol, Jimmy Barry  was also included in the presentation to the crowd in front of the Hogan Stand. 

When Cork comprehensively beat Kilkenny in the 2004 Final, a disgruntled Kilkenny fan famously said to a Cork supporter:  “Yerrah, rebels me arse, the only one ye had, ye shot him in the back! (Michael Collins) to which the Cork fan replied…”At least he was ours to shoot!”

                                        Veggies ate the carnivores! (August 2024)

Well done to Geezer and Armagh…they more than deserved winning the Sam Maguire. Interesting that their sponsors are Simply Fruit while Galway have Supermacs. Indeed, a lot of Tribesmen have been wondering since the loss at Croke Park…”Where’s the beef?” 

                                          A lock of drink!

 It’s some sixty years ago, outside Logue’s Pub in Carrigart, when my father was trying to assist a man the worse for wear during Lent, that he was informed, by way of excuse…”Normally, I don’t drink, but when I drink, I don't drink normally!”

                                         Taking the pith!  (September 2024)

As travel writer Paul Clements reminds us, Donegal has no shortage of its own pithy sayings: because Ballyshannon is divided by the Erne, it is said that farmers at the old fair days who haggled over the price of an animal, would compromise with “We’ll make a Ballyshannon of it”, meaning they would split the difference. 

READ NEXT: It Occurs To Me: A lighthearted look at 2024 - Part 1

Also, if someone tells you in no uncertain terms, “Get away to Pettigo!” then they don’t believe a word you’re saying. "God never comes near Derry", is attributed to a character from Patrick MacGill's book ‘The Rat Pit’, about the seasonal workers from Donegal making their way from Derry to Scotland. My big favourite though comes from Roscommon: “When the Boyle Froth Blowers’ Association protested about the price of a pint of porter being increased from sevenpence to eightpence in 1940’s, they adopted a colloquialism which survives to this day, ‘I’d rather be boiled in oil than oiled in Boyle’.”

                           Tall tales and deadly fiddling!

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, said Mark Twain. I interviewed the great storyteller from Ardboe, Patsy O’Hagan, many years ago, and when I asked him: “Patsy, what is the essence of good storytelling?”, he laughed: “I never told the truth in ‘me’ life!”. 

Of course he did, but he was referring, like Twain, to what is actually embellishment, a crucial element of any good story. I was reminded of this recently at a session where I recalled a character who boasted that he had been in the Swiss Navy and was a ‘Wingman’ on a submarine! 

That also brought to mind the buck whose war record as a fighter pilot included ‘Bombing the pyramids in Egypt” and on his way back home to Ireland, he “stopped off in Switzerland to see men making clocks!” 

As regards the wonderful Johnny Doherty, who will be celebrated in Ardara this weekend, he played in ‘Madge the Doc’s’ in Carrick in the early 70’s, and I was privileged to see and hear him a number of times. Johnny wasn’t just a gentleman, but a gentle, thoughtful person. 

One night, in that lovely lyrical way of his, he explained that “The first time I hit Letterkenny, I thought I was at the end of the world!” 

Everybody, bar one, listened reverentially to his stories and tunes, and later, he prefaced a tune he’d first “picked up in Scotland”, probably meaning that it was a composition by legendary ‘Strathspey King’, James Scott Skinner from Aberdeen. 

The ‘bar one’, with a whisky too much in him, piped up: “Arrah, Scotland? Sure you said Letterkenny was the end of the world a while ago!’ There was a hushed and embarrassed silence at the offending of a gentleman’s dignity, but Johnny gently lowered his bow, smiled and said, “Ah sure young fella, I was only ever in Scotland wanst or twi’st…you might say I was never there at all!” 

The whole bar erupted…bar one!

                              Hairy moments (October 2024)

Even during the worst of The Troubles, retaining a black sense of humour ensured a measure of sanity for many Derry people. I was in Andy Cole’s famous pub in the Strand Road over thirty years ago (sadly, it no longer exists) and a gang of ould fellas were slagging one another about their hirsute appendages…as to who had hair and who hadn’t, and did certain shampoos help growth etc?. 

One buck wondered whether ‘The Brits’ used ‘Head and Soldiers’ when they went back to barracks, which elicited a great laugh in the bar. 

One of them was as bald as an egg, so his mates wondered if he used ‘Back of the Head and Shoulders’? Your man took it well and responded that ‘a short back and besides’ did him grand. 

I was reminded of them last week when I passed by Baldies Barbers in Castle Street, where I often got the ‘gruaig’ cut over the decades. Many years ago, I was getting it clipped, when the barber remarked that I had a great head of hair, to which a customer nearby responded, “That’d be the Free State spuds…it wasn’t Derry baps that big h..r was reared on.” I instantly forgave him, as I think he was ‘half-cut’ himself.