With me shillelagh under me Celt and Shamrock in me Erse…

It’s Saint fekkin Paddy’s Day…. Agen! It seems like only a year ago we put on the silly fekkin’ hats and sang Whiskey in the Fekkin’ Jar and here it is, back again. I wish I hadn’t used me Whale Oil Beef Hooked T-shirt to mop up the dog’s vomit because this is surely the first opportunity since last year to wear that stewpid green rag again. Aunty Eileen MacFekkin-Donegal will be so disappointed she’ll drop her praties in her chowder whilst singing Oh, Fer a Musselly Cockle wi’ a Purpully Plum Fer a Knob, Alive, Alive Ho! But she’ll let yer feel her Craic for a poont. Or two half dollars and that's cheap at double the fekkin' price.

Holy Mother of fekkin’ Mary I could use a poteen o’ lukewarm Guinness after that. And now for the Leprechaun report. Feck 'em. Double feck 'em. Short-ersed, hairy-faced fekkin' twats. They can stick they's magic shillelalaghs up they's own treacle mines.

And as for you, you great useless bunch of fekkin’ protestants and micks, and yer fekkin’ agnostics as well, get yerselves along to the Daniel O’Connell Hotel in Northern Adelaide, County O'Tupperware, Donny-n-Maree O’Smond, on Wednesday, March 17th o’ fekkin’ course, to help pan!c get through five – yes, five, count them on your facial warts – one-two-three-four and fekkin' five – six –seven-eight - nine …. Holy Shite in a Crock o’ Gold! yer must be uglier than a hatful of erseholes!! With piles!!! To be sure, to be sure…. Arrr, Christ, I’m fekkin’ fed up with this, to be fekkin’ honest. Drop in and see pan!c, talk to the lads, buy them a Guinness and cheer them on, It’s a long way from 7pm to midnight on St. Paddy’s Day. This Wednesday

Thursday March 18 is Blues, Roots and Back to Normal Day at The Gilbert Street Hotel with Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers. Live music starts around 7 pm. Expect new tracks from Double Voodoo, the current CD from the Bluesy Twosome.

 The politics of looking after the kingdom

Don’t believe a politician about anything; nothing at all - especially not around election time. One of these parasites handed me a flyer that claimed he was “working for me”. I asked him if he’d scoot round to my joint to clean the gutters and pick up the dog shit and he turned his back and ignored me.

That’s not how I run my kingdom. Strictly speaking it’s not a kingdom, more like a castle-dom with a bit of a tarmac, some outhouses that include the dunny and some sheds all surrounded by a moat. But the management principal is the same and I will tell you that I am a king of principles. I listen to my subjects – I am truly aware that they keep me in comfort and safety, and I am obliged to them for that.

Take this, for example, in the case of the recent siege – we’re always under attack from some fukker or other; it keeps the cohort focused on ”enemies” and not on me. God forbid they ever question my tenuous grasp on authority - any pressure there and it would all come apart like a Made In China bodkin. Anyway, first it was the EMO-Goths wandering sadly around the perimeter committing suicide by throwing themselves in the moat.

Shortly after that, Squire SoftCock (the Squire is an “aspirational” peer whose name is pronounced soft – cock,  not soif-coh, as he tried to tell me). SoftCock flounced into the lounge room to tell me the Well-Heeled Oiks had used the bodies of the Goths to walk cross the moat and had isolated us from our outhouses.

I had a feeling the situation might get serious; I rely somewhat on the dunny.

Sure enough, the next day the Squire staggered into the lounge room and fell in a heap on the floor moaning: “Sire, there’s a Troll in the Dungeon!”

“Dump the histrionics, you big sook,“ I snapped.  “I could hatch a life-sized Brad Pitt, meself. And I could go a decent Jimmy Riddle; I’m a bit fed up with pissing in empty stubbies.  Here take this shovel and dig a new latrine in the library.”

“In the library?” he asked, aghast.

I gave him the look that I use for the accountant when he questions my amendments to the expenses sheet at tax time. Then the penny dropped.

“I see, Sire,”  said the Squire, shamefaced. “What a good idea. It’s… it’s just that that I…I…” he stammered, “I don’t have time to read in the toilet.”

Well, there you have it. No wonder the bastards are so fukken dumb. But, in fairness to me, I took on board his comment on the team’s working conditions and altered their workplace agreement to allow them 5 minutes toilet time a day with toilet paper - I didn’t want any pages torn out of my library books.

“Waddya waiting for, Limpdick? Get cracking and set up the new karsi quick-smart,” I said, “…and you can park your politician as soon as I have, ahem… inaugurated the joint.”

You see… that’s my kind of democracy… you look after the people who look after you.

Of course it’s probably not worth mentioning that once I’d had a shot on the new crapper in the library I reckoned it was a furlong and a half better that the old one so I immediately enacted a law that prohibited any of the plebs from using it.

And so it wasn’t my fault that the Squire filled his pantaloons with diarrhea, caught dysentery and died; that happened after the law was in place. I know his condition was pre-existing but the law’s the law – there’s no bending the rules and as far as I’m concerned the hoi polloi can go and shit in its collective hat... or pantaloons, as the case may be.