Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Hey, want to know something? A little bird has told me, (all hush-hush and on the QT mind), of plans to close down Cavan County Museum. There wasn’t going to be any formal announcement until after the local elections.

The county councillors knew it’s a white elephant. It’s costing too much and it’s not exactly pulling in the punters, but the FFers were too yellow to pull the plug. What’s more they were looking for a scapegoat, someone to blame. The Blueshirts were friendlier to the museum for “family” reasons, and they may be its saviours if they do well in the elections. They will want to keep it open as it’s a good source of jobs for relatives. What’s more one member of the party wouldn’t want to see it closed down as he’d then have to find a job for his son who, unlike him, is fuck all use as a plumber.

Sources close to the museum have revealed that, all going well, a conference is to be held there later in the summer – and at public expense – looking at the history of the Blueshirts in Cavan, with special emphasis on their commitments to family values, as well as the contribution of Cavan Blueshirts to the fight against communism, free-masonry and miniskirts in Spain. This conference will be opened by a special mass, to be broadcast live on Northern Shite radio.

But the museum’s parlous financial situation may have been solved without recourse to local neo-fascists. It has always enjoyed the closest of links with the Knights and other shadowy Catholic lay associations and it seems that some fellow pilgrims in the Civil Service have come up with a few million euro from a Department of Finance reptile fund. In return the museum is to be made into a Knights’ / Opus Diaboli retreat centre, where senior civil servants, politicians and businessmen can relax around a decade or two of the Rosary, and take a break from running the country into the gutter, while reading the latest publications from Four Courts Press.

This religiosity may prove a challenge to the born-again agnostic curator, but he has apparently mused philosophically that Ballyduff is worth a mass.

Seriously, were the museum to close though, it would be a tragedy for the decent people who’ve worked there like Savina and Pat Reilly from Mountnugent. Pat’s had a tough time of it and I always classed him as a close friend.

The really wild thing about this post is that there were people in Co. Cavan who believed it. It led not only to items on Northern Sound radio but to a story on the front page of the Anglo-Celt, and even more significant it compelled an official from Cavan County Council to deny that they had any plans to close it in a hurry. What was more an organisation from Ballyconnell jumped off the heritage gravy train to come to the museum’s defence. I was both shocked and delighted at the power of my words. Talk about the War of the Worlds! But as a Public Representative who gained re-election told me. “Ya mightn’t have been too wide of the mark.”

This reaction showed up the shabby people who’ve ever been associated with it. When I was there  I worked my arse off, yet what did I get for it? Whenever my name was mentioned the eyes went to the floor as if someone had said a bad word, and the mantra “There was trouble between him nad the museum” was uttered. And when they couldn’t find anything bad to say about me they made it up. Edith Piaffe may havee sang “Je ne regerette rien”, but I regret ever having had anything to do with that shabby place ancd the bac k-stabbeers who worked there.

But I still can’t get a handle on Dr Snott’s vindictiveness towards me. Just because I worked there, did he think in his tiny little mind I wanted his job? ! ?  I mean, come on, get real!  That a person like myself who knows over a dozen languages, with an ibnternational reputation, some of whose books have been translated into Russian and Chinese, as well as many other languages, would want to work in a crumby county museum in the arsehole of Cavan? It would be like expecting a well-known film actor to take a job as a part time usheretee in a provincial fleapit.