Cavan tourism tips: further dowm Farnham Street
Further down Farnham Street
One of the street’s finest buildings is the early 19th century Drop-in Centre for the Politically Impotent and Intellectually Bolloxed – a Meca [sic] for the county’s petty warlords. Apart from offering advice and support to sufferers (as jobs to relatives and political retainers) it is the location for a monthly Group Therapy session. There is also an Activity Room where the most popular game is “Pass the Chain”. Remedial therapists believe the chain, a trashy bauble, acts as a type of soother, somewhat like a baby’s dummy. (Most people in Cavan have heard the joke: “What’s the difference between a hedgehog and a meeting of Cavan County Council? Well for a start, with a hedgehog all the pricks are on the outside…)
But am I perhaps being a little harsh on our councillors? They are politically impotent because that is all the system allows them to be; a quasi-democratic figleaf to conceal the basically unrepresentative and authoritarian nature of the whole rotten system which exists first and last to serve the interests of people with loads of cash. They are reduced to the level of mere runners for an unelected executive which looks down its nose at them and which occasionally throws them little sweeteners like enhanced expenses allowances, so that they can get on with running the show. The councillors know that deep down they are only tolerated by the executive, who would really like to be shut of them, The executive sometimes insists that all representations to them must come through the medium of the elected representatives, as if the thought of coming into contact with the horrible hoi poloi (whose servants they are) would ne too stomach-chruningly upsetting.
The curse house
The ground floor of the council building received some much needed restoration work in the late 1980s. This was in the Emperor Bokassa Baroque style so popular in Redneck country. It is as cold and uninviting as a refrigerated ware-house, dominated by what this writer has named the Zero Mustell stair-case. People will remember the film Fiddler on the Roof, where a character sings that if he were a rich man he’d have a house with three stair-cases: one going up, one going down, and one going nowhere.
If this area seems chilly it perfectly matches the welcome given to anybody coming in from the outside world. I well remember (I’m trying to forget) when I worked for Cavan County Council. My then “boss”, Dominic Egan, asked me to go to the court-house with some letters to be placed in the internal post system there. I therefore handed the envelopes over to the “lady” at the reception desk, together with the polite request that they be placed in the afore-mentioned internal mail system. The receptionist shuffled them from hand to hand as if they were pornographic post-cards smeared with some unspeakable bodily fluid. Finally she said, simply. “No.”, Not “No, I’m sorry I can’t”, simply that one syllable expression uttered with a facial expression redolent of revulsion. I was startled by her rudeness and replied. “I’m sorry?” to which the word “No” was repeated only this time with a turn of her ugly face away from me. I persisted saying: “But Dominic Egan asked me to give them in to you.” Mention of a proper member of Council Staff, an insider, had a miraculous though not transmogrifying effect . She merely uttered another monosyllable “oh” and grasped the once offensive missives tightly in her miserable little hands. No hint of an apology for any misunderstanding! The “lady” in question acquired some fame in another sphere, but it wasn’t in a personality contest.
A place of Culshur and culchies
This area is often the site of exhibitions. Apart from the art, which is usually very good, these are usually launched with a reception and the free food offers a great opportunity for travellers on a budget to stock up with calories. The bloke with the chain, who usually opens them, looks and sounds like he’s on Day Release from Rehab. I recall one such exhibition by an artist friend of mine. Let’s just say her name was Leontine. The event was opened by the then county council who somewhat mechanically read from a prepared text. He intoned with all the emotion of a Speak-Your-Weight machine: “Leontine tells me she only paints when she’s … when she’s …. Jaysus where the fuck am I?” and here the hapless public representative fumbled furtively with his notes, all the while making sotto voce comments like “Well fuck that anyhow!” obviously obllvious to the fact that he was still miked up. The crowd shuffled embarrassedly. Naturall we were anxious to know just what Leontine had to be before she would life her brush: Pissed? Stones?? Turned On??? We all stood there, glasses in hand, trying to be inconspicuous, our eyes going from the floor (“If I had legs like yan one I’d keep them covered”) to the ceiling (“They were a bit mean with the paint there”) and back to the crowd (“I’m sure that’s a wig yer man has”) Finally the chain wallah said “Ah there I am, thank god. Happy. Leontine only paints when she is happy. I wish everyone would be like Leontine and wait to be happy before doin’ anythin’ ” – Polite laughter.
Poetry Please
Then there are the poetry readings, often presented by Cavan’s very own Adrian Paunescu. These are usually well attended, and as they get full coverage in a local rag scuffles sometimes break out between people as they try to should their way into the photographer’s view-finder. Here is an example of Adrian’s work, delivered some years ago at such an event ssurrounded by all THE people. It is translated by yours truly from the original Bullshitese:
We now live a new life, dreamt of and
fought for by our forbears,
By Myles the Slasher, the Gallant John Joe
By all those brave lads who donned
the blue-and-white who were once upon a time
The martyrs of our sufferings and of
The Breiffne County’s fate.
To witness Adrian enter this arena bedecked by his adoring fans, each one ready to outdo the other in frilly and verbose acolades, was to see the nearest thing to a Cavan pop-star.
Cavan’s Mr Big
The Drop-in Centre was the burrow of Cavan’s Mr Big, “a hairy hoor of a cunt” as he was described by detractors, and how he would probably have been glad to be described.. In the TV series Sex In The City Mr Big was someone who likef to stick his big prick up Sarah-Jessica Parker’s character; in Cavan he was just a big prick. He liked to give the impression that he owned Cavan, past, present and future; that he was a “very powerful person”, who could “take the house from under ya”; who could render grown men impotent, make their spunk taste of shit, who could give your cows the red water, your sheep the scour and your hens the trake; that his word was law; that he was an Irish Tony Soprano, – but it was all sh… show. He was a shite-magnet, attracting to himself rather dubious “colourful” characters who owed their petty piece of parochial pre-eminence to his patronage. It was all a vicious circle; the more creeps he attracted, the creepier he became. In his later years he was severely weakened by a host of parasites colonising his colon and general anal area. A whiff of sulphur and urine was also allowed to raft from him, so that there was a sense (and only a sense) of all not being quite “above-board”. But once again, this was part of the pantomime: it was a penis thing. He knew he had to play (more or less) by the rules but that no-one cared if he skirted one or too.
I have made numerous mistakes in my life of which I am not proud. I admit that I used to think that Mr Big was two-faced. Look Brian, I’m sincerely sorry. Compared to what has come after you, I think you were a model of straightforwardness and plain dealing. People always knew where they stood with you – they mayn’t always have liked where they stood but that’s different. On a one-to-one level you were almost normal, somewhat taciturn and quite shy, but you weren’t putting on an act of affability. If only you had been brave enough to be yourself, because once you were in the midst of your backing group of arse-lickers you seemed to be transformed into a bad-mouthed, insensitive bollocks with the behavioural traits of a randy tomcat - good at dishing it out, but not at taking it. But it was these very vocalists – the people whom you trusted – who were never tired of spreading nasty stories about you: “Hav;ya heard what the manager’s been upta now. Its a wonder he gets away with it.” Where’er you moved, no sounds could be heard. I would have loved to be in an office when his entrance was heralded by awesome silence, and then, as he was moving through, I would have let a multi-stroke hay-maker of a fart, accompanied by the comment: “Ah fuck it! I knew I shouldn’t have had so much for breakfast”.
Yet we should not forget his genuine contribution to sport, especially Gaelic Football and Golf. He was also for many years a coach and referee for Pocket Billiards.
Opinions about his legacy are still divided. For some he was a bad-mannered, bad-mouthed trick who did down the county, a vain and vindictive cunt who should have passed away in a prison cell instead of on the golf-course; yet for others he was a quiet, introverted intellectual who collected Modern Art and who took a keen interest in bonsai and photography. These people recall the memorable speech he made at the opening of an exhibition of paintings by a talented local artist in Ballyconnell, in which he quoted extensively from Tom Stoppard, demonstrating an intimate knowledge of the playwright’s work.
The place seems much emptier since he teed off for the last time. I never had a chance to tell him, face-to-face, man-to-man what I thought of him. Instead he listened to the inaccurate half-truths of his lick-me-arses. We might have had far more in common than he suspected. I’m sure he’d have been interested in my work on strategic management and economics. He held an MBA, a degree which I wouldn’t mind getting, even though several have said I wouldn’t learn anything that I didn’t know already. Now he’s gone – agus ni bheidh a leitheid ann aris go dteo!
(Reports have recently surfaced of a campaign to canoniise or at least beatify Mr Big. Miracles are being sought. If the Bring-a-Bottle and Blue Cheese ‘n Wine Party councillors who were up in his arse aren’t wiped out at the next local elections this might count as a miracle, but the Vatican might not be impressed. Already there are candle-lit vigils at his grave and a special scale model of his lavatory is being made for a local museum. There have also been harrowing scenes in which former arse-lickers have bewailed the various mistortunes which have befallen them, shrieking “This’d never have happened if the Manager was still alive…)
I can’t stand the way that some individuals who were afraid of their arses to speak ill of the man when he was alive, have become his foremost critics when he is no longer able to defend himself. That’s symptomatic of a strain in the Cavan character which has led me to say that its GAA colours shouldn’t be blue and white, but plain bright yellow.
But at least you knew where you stood with him; he never pretended to be anything different from what he was. There were some cretins who celebrated his demise at a relatively early age, believing that it would lead to the keys of a new, Lilly-white period of local government glasnost, but has anything really changed?
