Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Mary told her parents she was going out with some of the girls from work for a drink, and that they shouldn’t wait up. In fact she was going on a ate with the office stud. He wanted her to come back to his place, but because she was a virgin and she sensed that his intentions were not honourable she invited him back to her home, cautioning him not to make a noise.
Once inside the door he announced that he needed to go to the toilet – badly. As this would have meant a trip upstairs past her parents’ room she stopped him.
“But it’s urgent. Can I go in the kitchen sink?” he pleads.
I don’t know”, she aide. “So long as you don’t make a sound and clean up after you.”
He agrees and goes into the kitchen. Mary stands nervously outside, expecting his imminent re-emergence. But the seonds become minutes, and she eventually says. “Are you ok in there?” whereupon he sicks his head round the door and asks:
 ”Is thereany toilet paper?”

And he could just as well have wiped his arse with the booklet about the Fleadh in Cavan that I receiverd today. I deon’t know whether it was addressed to me at all. It just read “Ciaran Parker 4 Earlsvale Road.” Now I live at 5 Earlsvale Road, and I couldn’t be addressed by my proper title as this would have made that blatherskite from Belturbet look bad. The idea that someone else has a PhD in Cavan, of longer standing, is something he just can’t hack, so I have to be airbrushed out. To be honest the whole thing makes me totally ashamed to be from Cavan.

Readers will recall how I exposed the shameful practice of solicitor Helen Magovern who last September chose to deliver a high court summons or some other document on two people staying with a friend at 1.30 AM – a time and a manner which surprisingly did not strike other members of the legal profession as bizarre. Alas the people upon whom this was served have earned my disappointment and contempt by associating themselves with a street-walker in Belturbet who has represented herself falsely as a trainee solicitor. The friendship which they have rediscovered with her is all the stranger as not long ago they denounced her for letting them down when she did not appear on their behalf at a previous court hearing, preferring to spend her time with a male acquaintance whom I believe has been jailed for fire-arms offences in the United Kingdom. Even more recently they had hinted that she was involved in child trafficking. What is worse, probably at this shameful scrubber’s instigation, they have begun a campaign of hostile and potentially threatening text messages to a person whom, in their benighted paranoia, they believe to be working against them.  They have been seriously damaged by their ordeal, and I believe their psychological vulnerability was deliberately targeted by the Health Service Executive and others, as a lion or cheetah is attracted by the sense of fear exuded by a gazelle on the African savannah. Nevertheless, one would have thought they could see that they are going to be used by the person in question, in the same way she has used everyone else. She believes that she enjoys the protection of the not-so-Civic guards who may have been lured by the possibility of enjoying unspecified favours.

 It was evident that this couple have suffered greatly from the illegality and injustices of public bodies, but instead of turning their justified anger against those who have never meant them well, they have decided instead to conduct a campaign against an innocent individual who was lucky enough to extricate her son from the clutches of the aforementioned would-be solicitor. Such behaviour is both cowardly and wicked.

 Having said this, I still believe the behaviour of Ms Magovern on the morning in question was loathsome and morally reprehensible – I am entitled to express a belief I hope.

  It goes without saying that she was accompanied in her nocturnal frolic by members of the Gardai Siochana who obviously found the prospect of waking people up at Half one in the morning far less dangerous than dealing with drug pushers in the Navan area.

 Just in case any bright-eyed legal eagle (and I’m not talking here about the Ally McBeal of Erne Court who should seriously revise basic Contract) might think that I have violated the in camera rule regarding these people’s case, I must point out that I have commented upon matters incidental to it. I think that case law may support me in my contention that the serving of papers are always incidental to a case and not a part of it.

Last Sunday, November 15^th, we attended a get-together for that maligned and permanent element in Co. Cavan, the blow-in, organised in the Railway Station in Belturbet. This gave various organisations and clubs in the town an opportunity to alert people to their existence. The atmosphere throughout was pleasant, relaxed and enjoyable and tea, coffee, sandwiches and the ubiquitous buns were served in copious and delicious quantities. There was even a cake. Music was provided by the stunningly talented but modest Cormac McCann, as well as by a group of young musicians and choristers.

 Amongst those to speak was my good friend George Morrissey. What George does not know about the history of Belturbet would fit into the far corner of the cheapest denomination of postage stamp. In his usual, engaging way he told of the act of phoenix-like resurrection which saw the present Railway Station complex rise from dereliction and decay. He mentioned how the funding for the vital FAS scheme which had done so much work there, had been ended. I couldn’t help wondering whether this had been to help pay for Roddy Molloy’s First-Class tickets. John Scott introduced those attending to the Bowls Club of whose existence I’m delighted to hear. Crown Green bowls is one of those games for gentlemen (which does not exclude ladies) which seems to breathe a spirit of decency and fair play, combined with consummate skill. It is a game with a long and distinguished history; we all know about Francis Drake’s fondness for it. Early eighteenth-century Dublin had many bowling greens, some of which were laid out by the unfortunate man who took on the thankless task of remodelling St Stephen’s Green in Dublin in 1708. The Reverend Stephen Clarke, the recently-appointed Church of Ireland incumbent also spoke, as did people from groups representing Active Age and the scouts.

 On my arrival I was delighted to meet my good friend Canon Corrigan. We exchanged how we were both blow-ins of a sort in Belturbet, and he made the very important point that it is often the outsider who is able to realise a location’s possibilities and assets, which local people, maybe through that contempt-generating quality of familiarity, all too easily overlook. I think the capacity of welcoming and embracing people from outside has been one of Belturbet’s greatest strengths throughout its history.

A network of local branch libraries is a sine qua non of any democratic society, including Ireland. In areas where distances are long, library services cannot be concentrated in central locations without running the risk of turning areas in the littoral into emotional deserts. These branch libraries can be adjuncts of the central county libraries, providing the usual lending services and browsing facilities, while also being catalysts of activity in areas like local history and the arts. To this end the role of branch libraries, such as that in Belturbet, ought to be expanded, not curtailed.  What’s more branch libraries are used on a daily basis. They do not occupy inaccessible perches.

Education is a life-long process; it ought never to be left solely to schools, and indeed it is often only after the pupil leaves school that he or she starts to learn effectively. Local libraries offer a venue for people of all age groups to acquire knowledge and confidence. Increasingly, libraries have collections of language-learning facilities as well as films on DVD available for loan. In this way people recognise that libraries can be fun places, as closely bound up with recreation as with education. Running costs can be defrayed through a small annual subscription.

We must never forget that knowledge is power, no matter how it is acquired. It is also seen by some as dangerous – no more so than when it is acquired informally, outside of conventional channels of education. The present government talks much about “the smart economy”, but in reality this is mere froth and it would be scared shitless of a smart populace. In fact those who hold power seek to disempower people and so the acquisition of knowledge is curtailed and made more difficult. It is within this context that the closure of branch libraries must be viewed. Of course they pursue their policies through their storm-=troopers in local government who loyally pursue their agendas. They are always avidly assisted by local, democratically-elected councillors. In the 1950s a local politician in Cavan (whose identity I have diplomatically forgotten) once supported a cut in library funding on the grounds that the “the people know too much already.”

The staff of Cavan County Council are my dear friends. I think it is a backhanded compliment to their skills and professionalism, and to the fact that they hold their jobs on merit, that the library services are being threatened. If the library staff had been colonised by the sons, daughters, relatives and well-wishers of councillors and council employees, it would be far better protected against cutbacks in its staff and would be able to waste money like confetti, contemptuous of any need to provide a service to the public                        

I am conscious that my defence of Belturbet library may actually damage the campaign being pursued by those wishing to maintain it.  I’m not paranoid, I assure my readers, but there are a small handful of people at one time or another employed by Cavan County Council (whom I’ve never met) who have a propensity to lie about me, circulate vile rumours about me, undermine my activities and air brush me out of areas of Cavan life as if I had never existed. It is a reflection of the society we inhabit that such people, alas, have the ears of powerful people.  I am also too sadly aware that some of the above may be deliberated and mischievously misquoted, or quoted out of context, or otherwise distorted by some in the pursuit of their nasty ends.

Belturbet is one of the nicest towns in Ireland. It sits at a spot where the fast0-=flowing Erne seems to be embraced by sylvan

The town bridge, Belturbet

wonder of the countryside. To stand either on the main bridge in the town, or on the old railway bridge further south, is to be overcome by the simultaneous coming together of so many paths, of either land or water. One looks north along the river as it winds its way towards Fermanagh, or south as the fluvial highway leads south towards Putiaghan and Lough Oughter.

 The sense of location is never far away in Belturbet, for it was its strategic location which attracted the Anglo-Normans to build their motte, surmounted by a long-vanished bretesche, on Turbot Island.

 The town’s subsequent history was marked by tragedy, as when its inhabitants were massacred during the Ulster rebellion of 1641, as well as by a degree of riotousness, exemplified by the brief bacchanalian excesses accompanying the reopening of Dickson’s distillery in 1848m an even covered by me in my7 very first Echo of the Past for the Cavan Echo in 2006.

 For centuries Belturbet has been known for an indefinable buzz which has set it ahead of other towns in Cavan. There certainly seems to be a greater community spirit about the place. This is exemplified by projects such as the restoration of the old railway station and a length of the railway line between Straheglin and the railway bridge. When I have walked – or more accurately been pushed – along its length, no matter what the season, I am entranced by the proximity of nature. I also think of how much could have been done with lengths of surviving railway bed throughout the country.

 Belturbet’s liveliness is still reflected in the vigour of the town’s many shops and businesses. I doubt that it is possible to find anywhere a better butcher than Raymond Johnston while those looking for a bed upon which to rest their weary limbs should go to Tommy and Tania McMahon’s furniture emporium on  The Lawn. In the town’s off-licences one can buy items like authentic Lithuanian wheat beer, Wyborowka vodka and Belgian biere blonde. Although I am far fron being a pioneer I have not frequented many of Belturbet’s pubs,. though I can testify to the warmth and friendliness of The Yukon. For such a relatively small town there is a surfeit of fine places to eat, such as The Captain’s Table restaurant in The Harbour, my beloved Rendezvous, Mico’s on the Lawn, and the Seven Horseshoes where the welcome of Francis Cahill and his staff is as warm as the blazing log-fires which burn there throughout the autumn and winter. Some miles from the town sits one of Ireland’s finest Indian restaurants.

 Among those illustrious sons of Belturbet who have carried the lamp of learning far and wide was William Hearn, one of the founders of Australian Political Economy and an early professor at the University of Belturbet. The town’s rich history is often described through the generous scholarship of George Morrissey, truly a gentle giant amongst geniuses.

 The beauty of Belturbet’s surroundings have attracted many visitors over the years, some of whom have settled down there. Their integration has been aided by a genuine friendliness, openness and spirit of community.

 But alas there is a small, unrepresentative clique who are the very antithesis of the qualities I’ve just mentioned. These people are far from welcoming and what’s more they make up their minds to dislike people without ever getting to know them, and then pursue their cowardly jealousies through the spreading of vile rumours without any basis in reality. Regretfully some of them are able to do this scott free. Happily their nets of shame are so manifestly nasty that they are easily avoided.

Cavan people must be tickled pink that the Blueshirts oops Fine Gael party decided to hold a meeting of its parliamentary coven in Co. Cavan, and in of all places the SAS Radisson hotel be God.

 Their choice of venue is significant. The building was formerly Farnham House, the headquarters of the largest, most tyrannical and possibly most bigoted family amongst Cavan’s landed gentry.

 The Farnhams were originally called Maxwell, and they were among the second wave of mongrel foxes to grab land in Ulster. It is hardly significant that the land surrounding Farnham House is still amongst the best in the county.

 Their tenants were forced to pay exorbitant rents. During the Great Famine inability to pay was never accepted as a valid excuse and usually resulted in immediate eviction. The Lord Farnham of the time, it is true, showed no religious favouritism towards Protestant or Catholic in such soulless dealings.

 But the money robbed from their tenants did not go on the gaming tables of London. Oh no, much of it went to build Farnham House, which, in spite of extensive renovations, is still a cold and forbidding place. The Farnhams were avid partisans of the “Second Reformation” in Co. Cavan – attempts by Protestant evangelical societies finances by people like the Farnhams and the gullible praying classes of England to bribe the Irish peasantry to forego the religion of Rome for that of Canterbury.

 While one of the Lords Farnham died a horrible death in the Abergele rail disaster of August, 1868 the spirit of religious intolerance continued at Farnham. In 1896 Lord Farnham’s agent T.R. Blackley recommended to the lord that the vacant posts of under-steward and gardener be filled by “English Protestants”. This would have precluded amongst others the historian Lord Acton and Edward Elgar, composer of that anthem of tub-thumping and nauseating imperialism “Land of Hope and Glory” from employment at Farnham. Both were members of English society par excellence but both sadly were Roman Catholics.

 It is in the bosom of such exclusivity that the latter-day Blueshirts have assembled. They could have staged a re-enactment of the frightful “human hunts” which took plaee at Farnham, and whose lurid details were told to me by Cavan-town publican Linus McDonal, as in many ways this epitomised the current traversty of a democratic system we have. Young girls were stripped naked and made to wander through Farnham’s grounds while  packs of savage, baying dogs were set upon them so that they were forced to climb into one of the ground’s many trees from where they were rescued by “gentlemen” on horseback – n return for sexual favours. These gentlemen were often descendants and close relatives of members of te Anglican clergy. The hapless girls might have been saved, but at the price of being fucked.

Sadly bad weather prevented a march past by Fine Gael volunteers who are setting off on their battle to assure Ireland of a place in a Christian Europe. However there was a special trooping and blessing of the colours – a yellow banner urging a “YES” vote in the forthcoming and completely undemocratic re-run of the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

 Now the Blueshirts / Fine Gael are very big on jobs, so Enda Kenny and senior Blueshirts then went on a tour of sites in the county employing relatives of Fine Gael councillors such as Cavan town’s courthouse, town hall and hospital. I have learned that Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny was forced, through pressure of time, to turn an invitation from Councillor John Scott of Belturbet to visit his son in Cavan County Museum.

For a number of years Cavan town has prided itself on being relatively litter free. This was because it came high in an annual survey carried out by a shadowy organisation called IBAL. In their most recent survey Cavan has fallen back – to 22nd place I hear.

If Cavan is starting to revert to its dirtier nature some of the blame must be laid at the hands of the local County Council. For a start morale amongst council workers is at an all time low. This isn’t helped by the spectre of a three-day week hanging over them, and it certainly hasn’t been helped by being summoned to meetings with the lazy County Manager who, in the first meeting, exhorted them to work harder, and then at a subsequent meeting a week or so later exhorted them to work really harder.

A scheme whereby young people were paid to pick up litter has been scrapped by the council: they need the money to pay councillors who lost their seats. This was quite degrading but it did put money into young people’s pockets, but because working on it was viewed as well not exactly the done thing there were no sons or daughters of sitting councillors being paid to pick up trash – oh no, they had to get far nicer jobs than that – and so the scheme was axed. (Personally I can’t see why a certain councillor’s son who works in Ballyjamesduff couldn’t be given a bag, a shovel maybe, and a bag and told to clean the streets. It’s hard but honest work, but he’s such a delicate little flower.)

I have read in a recent number of the Cavan Echo how that stalwart defender of the hard-working white people of Belturbet, Councillor John Scott, has called for “traffic calming” measures in the vicinity of the town’s Fair Green and St Bricin’s School. Might I suggest that a good way of effecting this would be for Cavan County Museum to move to the site. Not only would this mean that Councillor Scott’s insolent scut of a son wouldn’t have to go so far to work, but as the museum attracts so few visitors traffic calming would be guaranteed. Maybe the museum might move to the vicinity of the Ballyhugh Heritage Centre, so that the members of the Ballyconnell Heritage group wouldn’t have to travel so far either.

I need hardly add that the above ought to be taken au leger, while what follows must be taken very much au serieux – that’s your actual French that it.

I have never envied Scott’s son his job in Cavan County Museum. Councillor Scott is no doubt justifiably proud of him, but would he be proud if he had brought up his son to be a jealous coward, who sought to insult and slight me without reason? But then I suppose a disabled person like myself is an easy target.

I have never met Councillor Scott – a situation I have no desire to rectify. He may no doubt wonder at my hostility towards him. Well now he knows how it feels.

May I take the liberty to observe that if he is anything like his son he may not be worthy to be a public representative.

I know that my style is not to everyone’s taste. There are those who pretend to be offended, but I don’t think anyone can doubt my honesty. If I don’t like someone tit is clear from the contents of my posts. I don’t engage in the nasty habit of whispering about people behind their backs, or indulging in character assassinations.

This is the last time I will ever refer to that duo Scott junior and senior, on my blog, either seriously or in jest. I just can’t lower myself to deal with filth. They can anticipate fate by going to hell. The same goes for that sad institution Cavan County Museum. It can go on being a costly white elephant providing employment to the families of local politicians, while vital services are curtailed and those providing them are given. I don’t care. Its miserable walls can dissolve into talcum powder, or it can be vapourised by aliens and its collection of toilet seats brought off to plant Zag.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, following Councillor Scott’s election (which seems almost certain), I don’t receive notice of some vexatious legal action against me – all of which I would be more than willing to respond to. This would be proof of the evil that I see myself as having to counter.

Let me just add a note of genuine apology to Mr Frank Gibbons of Cavan County Council. He won’t be troubled by any more of my hoaxes. I’ hope the museum can remain open, though purged of the arrogant scum that has accrued in it. I must add that I don’t think it’s my fault if people in Cavan are so gullible.

Lately, some Fine Gael local election candidates were unwilling to canvas my house in Cavan, not because of my warnings to them to desist, but because they said “There’s no point – sure that’s a Fianna Fail house”. (!) This is news to me even though I’ve much to thank the Party for (and much to curse it for too), but is it perhaps one of the reasons why yours truly was not invited to participate in last year’s conference in Cavan County Museum by the son of Cllr John Scott (FG. Belturbet?)

I’m off to make a ‘phone call to Seanie Fitzpatrick to ask him for a few bob.

I read in a recent edition of the Cavan Echo that the HSE (add an IT to it and you get what they are) have reduced the expenses payable to psychiatric nurses and support workers in the community. This is but one more example of the cowardly actions of a bankrupt government, which is actually pursuing a mild form of Nazism through its actions.

Have the expenses which county councillors pay themselves for attending useless junkets been reduced? I somehow feel the actions of a qualified and experienced health professional are more important than the wasteful and self-aggrandizing crap they get up to.

But these are the very scum who are coming around asking us for our votes. No wonder some aspirants want to get onto the bandwagon, Personally, I wouldn’t let any of them round the house. Who’s to say they’re not casing the joint?

In the last local elections I cast a blank ballot for the county council. I was going to spoil it by drawing phallic iconography on the back, or maybe applying labels to some of the “rabbit-in-the-headlights” mug-shots, with pithy yet pertinent legends like “wanker”, “trick”, “bastard”, “thunderin’ eegit”” etc. but I couldn’t be bothered. I’ll probably do the same this time too. Now there are one or two candidates standing who are not turds, whom I like and genuinely respect, but that’s just it. I cannot consign someone I respect to the role of a runner, a mere go-between between the public and an incompetent, arrogant, unaccountable, incompetent and probably corrupt county council executive.

I would like to give a plug to my good friend and fellow bon viveur Anthony P. Vesey. Alas I don’t have a vote in his electoral area but I hope he does well and really gives it up the arse to the blueshirts.

(No doubt there will be some gobsh … readers who will be offended by what I’ve written above. Yippee!!!! While others will have to have it read out to them or repeated third hand before they get offended. I’m sorry but I do not see the value of giving the name of a pearl to a turd.