Monday, 17 March 2008

St. Padraig's Day


Yes, it's that time of year again when it's perfectly safe to be proud of your Hibernian heritage in and about public areas with no fear of ridicule or embarrassment. Good old St.Patricia!

And all glory and honour to the authorities in me homeland over the water where the date is being magically transported Dr.Who-fashion backwards in time from it's real day - today - to the day before yesterday in an ingenious attempt to side-step a clash with today's Bank Holiday.

This transportation is scheduled for 3pm today to avoid any unpleasant merry-making and fiddle-dee-dee on the backwardly-shifted day in question. According to the laws of theoretical space-time warping rubber-sheet geometry and so forth, the day itself may not even happen on that basis. Or hasn't. But I suppose if you are reading this after 3pm, it's happened and it's now Saturday and you can have a long lie-in tomorrow.

It's not that complicated if you think about it. Here's a graph for those having trouble with the concept.


Now I don't know what the first Pope - Paulus Woodgnomeus XXIII - had to say about this. Of course I don't. Don't be stupid. But I can say without fear of contrapunctus that the new-ish one - Dom Benedictine Valderrama XIVIVIVIVI - has not pontiffed upon it as yet, himself be praised on high-up there. Of course, the old scoundrel may yet pontiff about a bit on the Saturday just gone if he can get his message ridden out on the old papal bull between now and 3pm (or possibly on the Saturday a bit later on i.e. the 17th minus 2).

In the meantime Club Derrig will be closed in tribute this evening i.e. Saturday, but may open up later that day. Monday it will be shut as per tradition, but obviously opening up at 5pm Saturday 15th March, two days back in time for this evening's rush.

As far as I can see it all means a large number of people getting off work a couple of hours early (which can be no bad thing, except in the case of the workshy fops I have to endure behind the bar of Club Derrig) and well in-keeping with the patronagely aspect of the Saint of this day, our lad Patsy, who was, of course, the patronly Sainthood of early doors, snakes, and shilelaghs.

I am led to believe that the celebrations in the UK are unaffected, what with their being such a godless bunch of heathens, troglodytes and circus folk.

All together now,

Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are leaking
The over-flow runs down the wall outside
The plumber's due - he said that soon he would be a-coming
'Tis you 'tis you must wait unless the bugger lied.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re 'Danny Boy' – have you mastered it on your little organ yet?

Col said...

I think they saw you coming when you bought a lens that makes big things smaller. Why not take some tips from Mutt, our resident professional camera chap.