HEART BEAT:Nursery rhymes might do the trick, but they need to be modified
I HAVE great sympathy for all the mammies and daddies trying to explain changed circumstances to all the little ones. It can’t be easy.
Our lot have reached the age of reason (most of the time) and can figure things out for themselves, so we don’t have to come up with explanations like, “Mammy decided to get rid of the SUV, because she really prefers to walk”; or “we got tired of going to Portugal three times a year; you can have much more fun in Bray2, even, “now that daddy’s got all this free time, he’s going to build you a tree house”. You needn’t explain that it might come in handy if the bank took the other one.
For the smaller ones you might modify a nursery rhyme to explain the current times, as for example:
" The Cabinet were in the counting house, squandering our money,
Mary Harney in the Government jet, eating bread and honey,
The plebs were in the wilderness, driven to the walls,
When down came the Revenue and pecked off their entitlements."
That’s a fairly comprehensive overview.
If by any chance you are asked by the little ones “who or what is Nama?” have your answer ready. “No it’s not a new name for granny, or you could try, “It’s a fairy godmother who is going to make everybody smile again and we won’t have to live in this tree any more.”
If you are very disgruntled, I would suggest, “Nama is a wicked witch who is going to swallow us all up for the next 20 years; we might even have to flee to Australia to get away from her.” That’s near enough the truth.
You know this Government can’t get anything right. The Minister of Finance seemingly has a thing for cloves of garlic. Any child knows that it’s the rest of us who need the garlic to help ward off the evil vampires in power, before they suck the last drop of blood from us all.
They’re known as the undead, since they’ve been around so long, and they’re genuinely scary. There is a rumour that they’re going to give us a stocking full of nasty surprises just before Christmas.
Seemingly, the only thing that will stop them running around any more and doing us untold damage, is to creep up on them when they are asleep, sated with their unvouched expenses (our taxes), and drive a stake through their hearts. That sounds a bit Gothic, but I believe they can also be banished by a thing called a vote. So sharpen up your votes and wait your opportunity.
They’re complex creatures, and some of the more senior have other characteristics. They are not reflected in mirrors, and even in bright sunshine they cast no shadow.
These latter characteristics are very useful for them if they get trapped by tribunals or anything like that. They’ve left no trace. They were never there at all; it was nothing but smoke and daggers.
The ordinary less cute vampires left a clear trail of ruin behind them. Now mammies and daddies explain to the children that they are going to have to pick up the pieces and put the world together again.
The Minister for Trolleys reappeared recently to exhort the nurses and doctors to stand to their posts and not let any differences or discontent with the Government hinder their commitment to patients affected by the swine flu pandemic.
It was hardly necessary to say that, and indeed if you were thin-skinned you might even consider it insulting. Actually Minister, for your information it’s part of the ethos of the carer that you do not abandon the patients. In the 1800s the life expectancy of a young doctor was equivalent to that of a subaltern in the British Army in those war-torn times. Cholera, plague, yellow fever, diphtheria carried many doctors away.
Florence Nightingales’ nurses and the Irish Sisters of Mercy worked indefatigably in the charnel houses of Scutari, impervious to their own safety. These are proud and fiercely guarded traditions. Thank you for reminding us, Minister.
Government is obviously a strange place where the denizens easily lose touch with ordinary people. Samuel Pepys in his diary, February 7th, 1660, wrote: “Boys do now cry ‘Kiss my Parliament!’ instead of ‘Kiss my Arse!’, so great and general a contempt is the Rump come to among all men, good and bad.”
Cromwell took care of the Rump Parliament, I wonder who’ll do it for us.
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon