Smasher Lagru

Great excitement and anticipation in the Baudelaire Lagru household this week as Hermione and Beatice prepare for the annual Coolderry Central School carol service/pageant in St Ita's on Thursday evening.  Each of them is doing a reading and the house is ringing to the sound of very heartfelt versions of "what was it like to be born in a stable, what was it like to be cradled in hay".



Well kids, I can tell you cos the carol service has been absolutely identical every year for the last four years I have attended.  21 pages of human suffering spread out over almost three hours (cos you have to turn up early to get a seat).  Last year I almost came to blows with the girls teacher, Mr Lupton, who tried to get me to move from my seat five minutes before throw in, even though there were no seats left and I'd been there forty five minutes early to get it.  I didn't move. (That's Mr Lupton in the back row of the picture.  My two are either side of Mrs Kennedy).

Fr Handler will be there, suffering in silence and wishing he was home watching TV while Fr Denouement will be in his element, thanking everyone several hundred times and welcoming us all again as we try to make a break for the exits.  I desparately hope he doesn't try to sing or tell a story this year.

You're thinking, it's the new Tory back to basics campaign and it'll never work and actually give Gordon Brown a boost. 
Yesterday a man came and introduced the Baudelaire-Lagru family to the delights of satellite television, a wonderful opportunity to watch a scary looking bearded baldy priest say the rosary (EWTN for those not in the know).

I took it upon myself to go through all the channels and delete those of an unwholesome sort of which there are many.  And a real collection of tired slappers there were, gazing at the screen with almost no effort at seduction while an ever tireder voice over asked you to call them at 2 quid a minute, like as if you would.  You would see better at a Mercy Ireland Conference.  Well, maybe not but do you remember the episode of Father Ted where Mrs Doyle was making eyes at the milkman and began wearing makeup.  That's the sort of type.  One dear in the midst of her writhings spotted a hair on her arm which she stopped to pick off. 



So anyway, I was deleting this rubbish, only I didn't know what I was doing and accidently deleted every station begining with "S".  My wife, Bellatrix, is not a happy chappy this morning.

Friday evening saw the Baudelaire-Lagru family gathered in the kitchen around the table, converted with loving reverence into an altar complete with two snowy white table cloths, some beautiful candle sticks and a lovely crucifix made by the Sisters of Bethléem, a contemplative order in the south of France who use local dolomite stone to cast their sculptures.



Our local curate, Fr Dan Handler, had kindly offered to say Mass and who were we to turn him down.  I explained to the children how it was important that they be quiet and respectul during the Mass.  The moment Fr Dan walked in, vested in a beatiful chausable with an icon of Our Lady on it, my eldest, Hermione began moaning, not in a "I'm in ecstasy" way but in a "I'm hungry" way - this continued loudly, even while I did the readings and then she took matters into her own hands by climbing up and getting a chunk of bread from the bread bin.  She chewed this throughout the Mass.  Meanwhile our second youngest, Artemis, who's three in March, filled his nappy and then wandered around the kitchen, unable or unwilling to sit down.  Beatrice began to take up the hunger theme by thirsting, though more gently than her older sister.  But she began to cry loudly when she couldn't receive communion - it was like watching Little Nellie of Holy God, except Little Nellie didn't have an older sister who went bananas and began screaming "don't be bloody stupid, you can't go to communion when you're only in senior infants - stupid!".  Only little Lemony, our youngest, managed to remain quiet and calm throughout.

Rarely was the Ite Missa Est responded to with such a heart felt Deo Gratias.

During the last number of months, various commentators have pointed to key moments in the ongoing political process which is the civil partnership of the DUP and Sinn Fein - meeting President Bush etc.

For me the opening of Ikea is in some ways the most interesting.  Roll back ten years and picture what Ikea would have meant to both men.  Martin Mc Guinness might have been scoping it out for the best place to plant a device - down the back of a Billy bookcase perhaps.  While Paisley, where would he have been?  Outside of course protesting about Sunday opening.

The Power to Change.

The world has finally and totally gone mad.  You know that expression, "you couldn't make it up"?  Well, you couldn't.

Protests from female soldiers have led to the Swedish military removing the penis of a heraldic lion depicted on the Nordic Battlegroup's coat of arms.

The armed forces agreed to emasculate the lion after a group of women from the rapid reaction force lodged a complaint to the European Court of Justice, Göteborgs-Posten reports.

But although the army was eventually happy to make the changes in the interests of gender equality, the artist who designed the insignia was less than pleased.

"A heraldic lion is a powerful and stately figure with its genitalia intact and I cannot approve an edited image," Vladimir A Sagerlund from the National Archives told Göteborgs-Posten.

Sagerlund blasted the army for making changes to the coat of arms without his permission.

"The army lacks knowledge about heraldry. Once upon a time coats of arms containing lions without genitalia were given to those who betrayed the Crown," said Sagerlund.

But the castrated lion has already won the day and is now worn on the arms of all soldiers in the battle group's Swedish battalions.

"We were given the task of making sure the willy disappeared," Christian Braunstein from the army's 'tradition commission' told Göteborgs-Posten.

"We were forced to cut the lion's willy off with the aid of a computer," he added.

The Nordic Battlegroup is one of eighteen such military groups in the European Union. Some 2,000 of its 2,400 soldiers come from Sweden, with the rest coming from Finland, Norway, Ireland and Estonia.

Blessed Al Gore, the Prophet of Doom and Soothsayer of Gloom, has announced plans to save the polar bear.  Launching a new organaisation: Polar Rescue International - Association of People United to Save (PRIAPUS), Gore said: "the plan brings together two of my favourite things, abortion and polar bears.  Now that scientists have realised there is no earthly reason to experiment on embryos for their stem cells, we need a hellish reason to support cloning.  We plan to grow lots of embryos and drop them at sites all over the Arctic to help our brother the polar bear.  Later we may need to expand the programme to include the disabled and the elderly.  It's really just an extension of the traditional innuit approach" continued the enormously fat former vice-president and loser who has managed to carve out a very lucrative and successful career playing on the fears of gullible people while stomping around the globe in his enormous carbon boots.



A spokesman for polar bears said "we'd tried to eat him but we just couldn't stomach it".

A moment I've been waiting for all my life arrived last night.  We were having dinner, discussing the day as you do.  My eldest, Hermione who's just turned eight, was telling me about a play she'd been to with the the school in Tullamore, "The Children of Lir".  She tried to describe various scenes and reached a point at which a monk had appeared and put 4 candles at the feet of the children.  At which point I of couse said "fork handles" and she said "yes" and I said "really, fork handles" and she said "yes" and I said "were there knife handles as well" and slowly the penny dropped and she said "no, 4 candles" and I said "I know, that's what you said, fork handles" holding up my fork.  She spied the advent wreath and saved the day by using a prop.  I explained who the Two Ronnies were.  And then we laughed some more.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article574546.ece

http://www.blogthings.com/whosyourinnereuropeanquiz/

Try out this short quiz and find your inner european.  Apparently I'm French.  But sure we knew that.  Where do you think the "Lagru" came from.

If you buy a teddy bear for a fiver and sell it on for a tenner, does that make the teddy bear a Prophet?

We welcome a new occasional correspondent, The Bald Devil, who lives in Greece and sent me that amusing question.



He followed up with the news that with tensions running high, Sooty has cancelled his tour of Jamaica.

Keep up the good work, TBD and I'll try to remember not to put your personal email in the public domain.

More anger from Portlaoise over the scandalous treatment of women who might have cancer.

"For years we've been trying to get people to pronounce 'Portlaoise' with three syllables - the final 'e' you know is there for a reason" said Blaithin O'Neille.  "and now weeks of saturation coverage by the media pronouncing it with two sylllables has undone all our good work.  It's a crying shame."

A spokesperson for window cleaners expressed confusion as to whether it was a "shame" or a "shammy".

Jonathon Westbrit of Citizens United for Two Syllables responded "It's bad enough living in a town that no one can spell without making it worse by pronouncing it as if we speak Irish.  If people in Dun Laoghaire can get away with saying 'Dunleary' then we can keep our two syallables".

Meanwhile it has emerged that the problem with misdiagnosis was the result of a misspelling when an administrator thought the "breast checks" were "beast checks" and sent them off to the Veterinary Section of the Department of Agriculture.  A spokesman said "It's an easy mistake to make, especially with women from Laois".