April 9th, 1958

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Myles na Gopaleen was in an energetic mood in this Cruiskeen Lawn column. – JOE JOYCE

FROM THE ARCHIVES:Myles na Gopaleen was in an energetic mood in this Cruiskeen Lawn column. – JOE JOYCE

SWEET MERCIFUL fathers!

I don’t know what’s coming over me lately, as I once said to the nurse when she started pulling the blankets up in Baggot Street [Hospital] the time I was put outside an outside car by a drunken jarvey – but I keep thinking the queerest notions.

I wondher is the head giving way at last? Oh, I can well hear those bowsie back-of-the-hall cries: Whaddya mean at last? Very funny, in-dee-ed. Do you know a thing occurred to me the other day this’ll give you a laugh.

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Could you imagine coming into the office one wet bleak Monday morning the teeth is at you there’s trouble at home about the granny steeping nightshirts in the handbasin and there’s more trouble from the wife complaining that you never bring her anywhere and no laugh when you make a date for the Abattoir Tuesday the crowd below in Sallins writing up to know do you expect them to educate the whole eight boys buckshee maybe to write salanacious and misanthropical novels like Joyce and to cap all some chap in the Castle writing calling me “A Chara” and threatening to put me into jail.

Just think of all that. Then when you shut the office door you find a waterpipe has burst during the night.

You wade to the desk, pick up the paper. Know what’s on the front page? (This is crazy.) Just two four-letter words-modest, a bit rare, perhaps; apparently conclusive.

These :-- GOOD NEWS

I admit it, of course – if that happened the heart would give.

* * *

MORE BETOKEN, I was lying in bed last Easter Monday morning, innocent as a Christian and reading “The Nabob,” a terrifying extravaganza by one of our Cork writers. Faix and I could not think of what better thing to do with myself when a dear friend called, and we were there chatting out of us.

“I backed the winner of the Irish Grand National,” says this character. “Nice of you to tell me,” says I, “at this stage. What price was he?” “The race is after lunch, man,” says he. “You have plenty of time. The horse is Knight Errant. At Fairyhouse.”

“Go to the telephone,” says I, “and order a yoke or a growler. We will go down and back it in the traditional à la mode cum knobs on.”

All went according to plan. When the cabby arrived I gave him and my friend a tumbler of nourishment with quantum sufficio of aqua pura, then this Jem stuffs himself up on the box and away with us, myself and friend in the back sitting on breadcrumbs, old paper bags and some copies of the Illustrated London News dated 1881.

Between hopping and trotting we got there, still alive after the most gruelling part of the Grand National course.

And we got our money on. And Oh. I nearly forgot. We played cagey-cannon, laid off between several bookies and a slice on the Tote, so as not to ruin the price. Yaaa. That’s all.

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