Joy And Fun Are Fucking Killing Me ✑ Act Ⅳ

By AM Wednesday, August 31, 2022

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Michael Praetorius ✒ with the fourth act in his satirical series.

Oh, lucky woman

The first thing I told Jean, when we started chatting on the dating site, was that I had just saved £100 on my heating oil. I wanted her to know the calibre of man with whom she'd hit the jackpot.

I think she was equally impressed on our initial date, at some place on the Lisburn Road. Looked a bit expensive to my mind, so while Jean ordered lunch, I settled for a Diet Pepsi. Nevertheless though, when the waiter handed me the bill, I remarked to Jean, as I passed it over to her, that I'd cover the Pepsi for sure. It was the generous thing to do, after all, and I could see from the curious, admiring look on her face that I'd gone up even further in her estimation.

Second date was at the QFT. Some European film with subtitles but, disappointingly, no big nudey women scenes essential to the narrative, like they usually have. Anyway, I'd bought the tickets online and afterwards in the Jameson Bar, as we and the other pseuds chewed over the import of all those gloomy faces and events on screen, Jean asked how much they'd cost.

We'll go Dutch, she said.

£10, I said.

Ok, she said. And offered me a fiver from her purse.

Actually, I said, as a Senior Citizen, mine was discounted to £4, so you owe me another quid . . . 

With that same admiring gaze, she playfully flung a pound coin right at me.

Treat yourself, she said.

I had to root around on the floor, mind you, but I'm sure she'd have given me another pound, had I not eventually found it.

 

Charity begins at school

An exciting development . . .  There's now a crowd called Make Ireland Catholic Again. And since Donegal has never been anything else, they only have 25 counties to go.

Years ago, at St Colman's, a priest said to me, A bit of humility, Praetorius; remember that.

Of course, I didn't, and now secular Ireland is under siege. Will we be made to dance at the crossroads after compulsory Mass? Strapping lads, comely maidens contesting the Poc Fada, and us trailing after them over the bogs in the rain? Sharon Shannon and her awful bloody squeezebox everywhere? Baseball caps obligatory, Heineken mandatory, as we watch the appallingly culchie Championship? GAA manly men keeping feckless women in line, and pronouncing that Oscar Wilde went a bit too far?

Years ago, at St Colman's, the same priest said to me, You think you're better than all this, don't you, Praetorius . . .  ?

Yes, I do, I said.

With your foreign newspaper and your filthy pop music, he opined, you’re a disgrace to the country you were born in.

And, taking a copper halfpenny from the pocket of his soutane, he tossed it on to my desk and added, Give that to your benighted Mother to put towards a haircut for you . . . 

 

Definitely abuse

I don't talk much about my childhood. It's taken years of counselling to get me this far. I've

 tried every desperate route I know, bar becoming an actor, to block out the terror of my youth.

It began when I was 11. I'd passed the 11 Plus. My father made me go to Grammar School. All my mates were free to go to the local secondary school. No homework for them. Meanwhile, my overbearing father rigidly forced me to do mine, in the sense that it was left entirely up to me whether I did it at all. But hounded thus, I predictably fared well in my A Levels.

Ruthlessly, my Da then suggested I consider going to university only if I wanted to, sinisterly implying that I'd always have a loving home with my parents regardless of what I chose. Faced with such harassment I, of course, went to university. While I was there he slyly went out of his way to make sure I never wanted for transport, or money if he had any himself. Terrorised thus, I obtained a degree.

Next thing I knew my degree enabled me to coast through 40 years without ever doing a real day's work. I then had no option but to retire on a comfortable pension, and spend my time doing exactly as I pleased.

All because a cunning, manipulative man had blighted my life with his cruel, selfish desire to give me a 'better' chance . . .  !

Oh yes, he achieved his aim. But it cost me my heart and soul, my being. I have watched many of my old mates freeze, starve, brawl, die young, go to gaol, support Celtic, get tore on dole day, wear the naffest chav gear, beat Hell out of the wife and each other, never learn to read, write or, indeed, speak English.

But none of these priceless, deeply personal expressions of freedom and being were available to me. Instead, tyranny and slavery, at the hand of a man who knowingly contrived to ruin my chances of being a farm labourer or factory hand or corner boy.

Fortunately, times have changed, and I was having none of that horror heaped on my own son. So it came as a complete surprise to me when he announced, at 5 years old, that he'd considered a range of options, mulled them over for some time, and finally settled on a strategy for his life: pass the 11 Plus, go to Methodist College, then up to Cambridge as an Organ Scholar. He added that the whole shooting match  was all his own idea, nothing to do with me or his Ma. And, as it turned out, he was as good as word.

So, Let them make up their own minds, I say.

 

Who wears the dildo in your house . . .  ?

I was listening to The Lemonheads today. Their singer/songwriter/guitarist was called Evan Dando. I wonder if he's related to the late Jill Dando, or Jan Dildo,  as she was originally called? It was her great grandmother, Roalda Dildo, who invented the famous female sex toy that we(e) men so envy.

This formidable woman, originally from Canada, was an accomplished lumberjack. But, as a fierce believer in the integrity of the British Empire, she had commanded a women's company of Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s.

Unfortunately she chose to marry an Ulster Presbyterian. A physically demanding woman, she had never encountered a man so stricken by incapacitating nocturnal headaches. So, harking back to her tree felling days, she whittled a 'joy' stick from the branch of an apple tree in their garden.

Thus was born the Dildo. When her husband, whose heroic abstinence inspired generations of Ulster men to say No!, died, he left a substantial sum of money. This she used to establish a factory in Cullybackey, where mass production of dildoes began in 1933, due to the great preponderance of Ulster Presbyterian men living in the area.

Production continues there today, in more modest quantities, but many in Cullybackey can still remember its heyday as the Dildo capital of Europe. Various models are available, including the legendary Paisley Poker (Yo Surrender!) and the rampant Robinson RamRod (for the older woman who still wants something younger).

 

Nobody loves her

Off to the University of the Third Age to hear a lecture entitled All Men Are Dreadful. It was delivered by some specky little tugboat, perpetually enraged by her utter lack of sex appeal.

In the foyer afterwards several feminist groups had set up stalls. My favourite was Armagh Catholic Feminist NIPSA Sisters Against Abortion, Except Where The Foetus Is Male.

Later, I saw our resident Lothario talking to the little woman who had given the lecture. Like all great gigilos he has nerves of steel; though quite visibly nauseated, he managed, heroically, not to vomit all over the creature.

On leaving I was importuned by one of the 'pro life' Catholic Feminists to sign some grubby petition; something about saving the lives of thousands of fully formed little Celtic supporters who would otherwise be 'killed' by sadistic Dr Mengeles in abortion clinics.

I looked at her earnest face, glowingly infused with certainty and faith and righteousness and crusading mission.

Just like Flaubert, I told her, I have tried to live my life in an ivory tower, but its walls are being assailed by a tide of shite.

Eh . . .  ? she replied, but reached over to offer pen and petition anyway.

You will lean that way forever, I said and wandered off.

 

Talkin’  Barry Bucknell Blues

Jean, aghast at all the odd jobs that need doing around the place, said to me the other night, You know, if I'd known earlier in our relationship that you're a man who's always at his books but can't even put up a shelf for them, I'd have seriously reconsidered us as an item.

I tried to explain. There was a priest at St. Colman's, a Maths teacher, called McGuinness. He was a big bull of a bogman from Roscommon, and he took a drink to prep himself for whatever. Every week his Mammy would post him the Roscommon Herald, and he'd bring it into class, sit back, prop his feet up on the desk, and read it while we scribbled industriously at our sums.

Then he'd ask some question like, Well, McKenna, what do you make of the state of the fiscal economy in Roscommon then? All at sea, Noel had no reply, so McGuinness would lean over and swat him thickly round the ear with the paper.

On another occasion he threw a haymaker at the same lad's head, but Noel managed to duck. McGuinness's big fist smashed into the blackboard, his knuckles leaving a crumpled dent in it. That dent remained there for years: a desperate warning to everyone who saw it not to cross him.

He knocked us around all right, and we were terrified of him. But the way things were then, this was nothing to write home about. Whether he despised us quite as much as I'd say, with hindsight, he probably – on some level - despised himself and his life, is a moot point.

Some years later, though, I attended the baptism of my brother's second son, in Craigavon, and who should be officiating but the bold McGuinness . . .  !

Well, you can guess how our reunion went at the little reception afterwards: McGuinness the unreconstructed bully-boy hypocrite, and moronic GAA gael; me the now unafraid, militant, anti-clerical, atheist 'Anglo'. My brother eventually had to beg us, for the sake of the day that was in it, to break off our vicious slanging match . . . 

So, I mean, it's no wonder I can't put up a shelf . . . 

Me and Bobby McDylan

Dave Van Ronk's first words to me were, If you're another pilfering bastard who's gonna rip me off, just fuck off now . . .  !

He was referring, of course, to Bob Dylan 'borrowing' his arrangement of House of the Rising Sun for his (Dylan's) first album. I felt a little guilty. It was me who actually played guitar on the track, Bobbie being unable, at that time, to get his 'thumb over the top' on the F chord to give it that 'big' sound.

I was doing all right in Greenwich Village back then, early 60s. I'd met a girl and was living in her apartment. Her name was Ramona; she was a friend of Dylan's and he had written a song for her but couldn't think of the right title for it.

What about To Ramona? I said.

Wow! Cool, said Bobbie. That's it, man!

I was hanging out with Paul Simon a lot, too. I was teaching him English. He was under the impression that Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost were top notch poets, so there was quite a way to go with him. He had written a song about his girlfriend, Kathy. He debuted it at Gerde's  Folk City one evening and told me afterwards he was calling it To Kathy. I told him about the title I had given Dylan.

Oh, for fuck's sake! he answered. What's that going to look like?!?

What's the problem? I asked, not really seeing a problem.

Problem . . .  ? he shouted. Dylan writes To Ramona and five minutes later Simon writes To Kathy . . .  !!! Everyone in the Village sees me as a Dylan clone . . .  I'm already the first 'new Bob Dylan', and he hasn't even made it yet! And you ask what's the problem! I'll have to drop the song ... that was the best title ever . . .  it even had Kathy's name in it . . .  Jesus wept . . . !

I told him to calm down. An idea had struck me.

Call yours Kathy's Song, I said.

Paul deliberated.

Wait a minute, he said, finally, that's perfect . . .  Kathy will love it . . . !

I said, Just trying to keep the customer satisfied . . . 

 

Charles Wood time

It's that time of year again. The Charles Wood Festival and Summer School is off and running. Choral and sacred music fills the air. The streets of Armagh are choc-a-bloc with people like me: measured, perspicacious, refined, intricate, trailblazing, cultivated. As opposed to the usual bullish, monosyllabic, native pudding-heads and numbskulls.

Today, we had Evensong. Like many an existential nihilist atheist, Evensong is one of my favourite things. Partly because it contains (preferably sung versions of) two wizard New Testament canticles: the Magnificat (Song of Mary); and the Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon).

The plain people of N Ireland of a certain persuasion have no truck with the Marian cult, so it is always a pleasure to see them forced, by the influx of high church aficionados from England and elsewhere, to put up with, begrudgingly, this song attributed to the woman we devout Catholic children called the Blessèd Virgin.

Saint Luke reports that Simeon was a devout Jew who had been promised by what used to be called the Holy Ghost that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for the ceremony of consecration of a firstborn son, Simeon was there, and he took Jesus into his arms and uttered the words of his beautiful, valedictory song:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

As I listened this evening I realised its sentiments echo mine precisely when I reflect that a non existent deity has mercifully permitted me to live long enough to witness today's marvellous incarnation of the Saviour: in the form of retard celebrities, 'reality' TV, political correctness, enforced compassion, and compulsory maximum self-esteem and fulfilment.

How do you like me now . . . ?!

First there was Magherafelt. And if you read my last column you'll know that gig was rudely interrupted by a manic street preacher, and culminated in an indecorous public commotion. Nevertheless, it was a portent of great things.

For lo and behold, word gets around, and the only way is up ... I have just been booked to play at the Glebe House Harmony Community Trust Roald Dahl Raucous Family Fun Day in Kilclief . . . !!

On signing up, I magnanimously told the organiser that I'd donate my fee straight back to the Harmony Community Trust.

Well, you could if there was a fee, she replied, but there isn't ... No expenses, either, before you ask.

The main thing, of course, was to keep the Harmony Community Trust away from my Facebook page. All the employees are young, and you know what young people are like nowadays. Unlike the rest of us, they do seem to need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. So looking at my stuff they might well have got the wrong, or indeed right, impression, depending on which quarter of Woketown they hail from . . . 

Have you any videos of your playing? they asked.

Without thinking, I replied that I had a few on my Facebook page. Send me a friend request, I added.

Are you senile? enquired a Protestant when I got home, they'll think you're possessed by the demon of a second rate Auberon Waugh . . . !

They won't know who Auberon Waugh was, I said.

Jean had a point, though. On the other hand, it would be bigly flattering to be deemed even a mediocre Auberon Waugh. It was a poser; I was torn.

But in the end I ignored the friend request, and sent a hasty email instead. Just trawled Facebook, I lied. No videos there (lie). But Jean, who worships me and my music (lie) has made a collection she can moon over (lie) when I bite the dust. A couple attached. What do you think?

Amazing, they replied later, you're in . . . !

You can fool people into thinking you're a guitar player, but not that you're Auberon Waugh ...

 

Charles Wood (reprise)

Off to Sung Mass tonight, part of the Charles Wood Festival and Summer School. The service takes place in a choral music setting and is therefore open only to cultural aesthetes like myself, and Jean, by Papal dispensation, even though she’s a Protestant. Prods think sacred music is that creepy Willie McCrea guy. Your average Armagh Catholic chav or NIPSA member, in stained tracksuit and putrid trainers, is kept at bay by a police cordon around the church.

Jean finds it difficult to understand that I, an unreconstructed and unrepentant atheist, have more chance of going to heaven than she. But both Saints Mark and Matthew, in their gospels, recount an occasion when Jesus outlines who will be welcomed into his kingdom, and he clearly says, Even the least shall enter herein, but not the black turncoat.

It's a while since I've been to Mass, but imagine my surprise when I realised it was being said in English . . . !! Dominus Vobiscum, I intoned to the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral, who was sitting behind me. Et Cum Spiritu Tuo, he responded heartily. It's a holy terror that we have to depend on the Orange Order to keep these sacred traditions going.

Anyway, during the boring bits of tonight's Mass (i.e. all of it except the music), I tried to estimate the number of times I crossed myself before packing God in long ago and far away. Must have been about 1000 times every year, at least. So maybe about eleven or twelve thousand times in all. How much time does that add up to? And what  might I have done with that time had I not been crossing myself?

My favourite time at Mass was always Holy Communion, for it offers a chance to sit back, relax and watch the procession of Holy Joes and creeping Jesuses participating in the great mystery of why they are such nincompoops.

Never mind that it's all mumbo-jumbo, though. That’s neither here nor there. No, the most appropriate basis for abstention is these bloody lay 'helpers' who are all over the sanctuary nowadays. They ooze a greasy 'holiness'; they reek of fake humility. They shuffle around, ostensibly obsequious, but drenched in self-importance. They stumble through the readings in a spiritless, unpunctuated monotone, with none of the gravitas, intonation, and expression a liberal university education would have bestowed upon them if they hadn’t been gormless.

Then they're allowed to open the Tabernacle with their unsanctified, grubby hands, and get the hosts and stuff out. Most of them as old and dilapidated as me.

And, grotesquely, they now presume to dole out Communion ... ! For, suddenly, a creepy pair of these old timers lined up with the priest, chalice in grizzled, calloused hands. As a confirmed atheist I draw the line at this. Dear God, if I'm going to be misdirected and conned, it'll be by the magician, thank you, not his unlovely assistant - an oul codger or oul bag of a nosey parker who, as my mother would have said, spends the rest of the week eating the altar rail.

Even more traumatic, however, was the bit when the priest sprang a sadistic invitation to 'give each other the sign of peace'. Instantly a whole horde of complete strangers, many of them dressed in appallingly poor taste, was trying to shake my hand. Jean, because she is a Protestant and knows no better, went along with this, but I stood firm, arms resolutely folded until the wave of vulgar, spurious, 'spiritual' feel good baloney receded.

 

And in the end

It was instructive to attend Sung Mass at St Malachy's Catholic Church a few nights ago. I couldn't help but be touched by the simple, incurious, credulous faith of these ordinary, unsophisticated, feckless working class folk.

It was also instructive to attend Choral Evensong the day after in the Church of Ireland Cathedral. I couldn't help but be touched by the simple, incurious, credulous faith of these singular, sophisticated, aspiring, middle class folk.

I, on the other hand, was lucky enough (if you like) to read Philosophy at university, and can see, therefore, that both congregations' toytown fantasizing amounts to nothing but wishful thinking. Religion, after all, is merely philosophy without the questions, science without the evidence.

Or, to put it another way, as my mother (God rest her) never missed an opportunity to remind me, I'll die roaring . . . 

⏩Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . .  when he can get a pitch. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.