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Content Zone
Tue 30-Aug-2005 12:31
More from this writer..
Soap Opera
Episode 13: “kEEp yoUr NoSE Out or YoULL be coVerING yoUR Own FunEraL” Its four in the morning, lashing rain and a ‘cowld’ wind and Anchor Murtagh and Farah Farrell discuss their woes and toes…
Date Line: Lough Derg, County Donegal, Ireland
Its four in the morning, lashing rain and a ‘cowld’ wind and Anchor Murtagh and Farah Farrell discuss their woes and toes…
“My feet are aching, I cut my big toe earlier on a bed. God those stones!”
“Are you doing any praying?”
“Yes , I’m praying for it to end.”
“Did you ever do anything like this before?”
“No, although I saw Croagh Patrick, I didn’t climb it mind”.
“I was at the moving statues, didn’t see anything though”
“Tis funny though the kind you meet here..”
“Yeah, Father Fleming all over Susan McCann. Jaysus it must be penance enough having to listen to him fawn over her”
******************************
Meanwhile, back in Knockmult, the phone is ringing in Gerry ‘The Obituary King’ Gunning’s house. Will he get it he wonders. Better do it. It might be somebody has died.
“Ah … Hello Gerry?”
“Yeah, Gerry here”
“Father Funeral here”
“Hello Father Funeral. What can I do for you?”
“I just rang to tip you off that Seán Brosnan is on the death bed, they’ve just rang me to administer the last rights.”
“That’s grand so, I’ll get an eyewitness account of the death for the paper. Thanks Father.”
“No problem Gerry”.
******************************
It’s sunrise on the penitential island of Lough Derg…
“When’s this meal?”
“Later, you can have it when you want though.”
“So I can have it at nine?”
“Yeah, but that’s it for the rest of the day … and night”
“God it’s an awful hard decision”
“It’s only black tea and some rotten oatcake things. And there’s no such thing as butter, there hasn’t been butter here since the year 1187.”
“I heard that there’s toast too.”
******************************
In some parts of the country the banshee signals that someone is dying. In Knockmult it’s a noisy black Ford ’87 Granada with Gerry Gunning in the driver’s seat.
Gerry parks the car and rushes into Brosnans.
“Hello Mary, how are you, an awful time it is too”.
“I know, he’s on his last breaths”
“I’m here on business. Is it yerself I’d be talking to?”
“Yes”
“’The Nationalist’ haven’t been in yet?”
“No”
“I think its going to be a big crowd, a lot of interest locally and didn’t he live up in Urlingford for a while?”
“He did”.
“How does five hundred pounds for the exclusive rights to the funeral sound?”
“I’d be looking for a good bit more than that, say a thousand and I’ll let ye put a screen up as we go in and out of the church and a screen at the graveside”
“OK a thousand it is so.”
******************************
Back in Lough Derg …
“Met a young lad studying in Trinity earlier”
“Trinity, rotten with sex I hear, rotten…”
******************************
Gerry bursts into the office of ‘The Parish Print’
“We got the exclusive rights for the Brosnan funeral”
“That will be a big front page spread alright.”
“We’d have to do double the print run for that.”
“I can see it now, the family in full colour around the coffin as he’s laid out”
“One with the family, then the family and the priest”
“Its such a picturesque little church it’ll look great”.
“Word is too that all the family won’t be invited back to the Community Hall either!”
“That’s right there was a big falling out there a few years ago.”
“I better get on to doing the obituary. By the way any post for me this morning?”
“Yeah there’s a letter here”
“Grand , Slán”
******************************
“I never thought dry toast would taste so good!” says PJ
“I never thought that I’d be having fantasies about potatoes before this.” Says Anchor
“You were fantasising about potatoes too, I’m not alone so, I was beginning to get worried!”, says PJ
“That hits the spot”
“We’re nearly there lads I reckon we’ve only a hundred and twenty seven decades of the rosary left” says Fist Flynn
“Shut up!”
“Ah, but we’ve a nights sleep to fit in too!”
******************************
Gerry gets in the car and opens the envelope. In it is a note done in cut out newspaper letters…
“kEEp yoUr NoSE Out or YoULL be coVerING yoUR Own FunEraL”
Coming in Episode Fourteen …
Who knows that Gerry’s been asking questions?….. How many decades of the Rosary will the Boys ultimately do?… Will ‘The Nationalist’double cross ‘The Print’ over the funeral rights?…Oh, and yes they will play a game soon!
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