Ragtag Giggagon

CHAPTER ADDENDUM VATICAAANICUM: A VISITATION FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE HOLY MOTHER (PART THREE) C ontinued from Part Two .                 I do remember that on that particular March evening of every year, at a minute or two to midnight, we left the flat lemonade out in the middle of the sitting room with an air of trepidipity. There would be at least a dozen bottles sitting on the carpet awaiting collection. Father took charge of just a few things in the house: For example, he looked after the fireworks, the razors when Mother hadn’t pawned them, the smoked kippers, the drink, and that goddamned Ouija Board that was used to summon the Bearded Madonna.                 Employing a simple bottle cap from one of the mineral containers, Father would crouch over the board and perform his “stunt” – the calling of the Stunt Double Mary. Usually,...

CHAPTER ADDENDUM VATICAAANICUM: A VISITATION FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE HOLY MOTHER (PART TWO) Cont inued from Part One .                 However, Mary did have her counterpart in the modern physicist’s multiverse – and with that science being only in its infancy at the time, what with the springy cheese products made for the children, and the mozzarella for the fancy pizzas having not been yet invented, there was only one four-dimensional alternative to our own four dimensions. Every year, in order to appease the mirror universe Holy Mother, on the twenty-fifth of March in general – although a visceral feeling in the gut could allow for a votive offering to be made at any time of the year, Lord bless us all – where was I? Ah yes. In general, on the 25 March, people would leave all of their “sody pop” be it lemonade, cream soda, Kelly’s cola, or whatever other fizzy drinks were in the house at the time – out for ...

CHAPTER ADDENDUM VATICAAANICUM: A VISITATION FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE HOLY MOTHER (PART ONE)                 Picture if you will a time of great superstition that will all end in tears. A time when there was no television or Raidío Teilifís a hAon (whether the “I” is on the “radio” or not is irrelevant, coz you don’t have to look at it), so people would make their own entertainment, with local sportspeople taking on the guise of more famous sporting luminaries.                 Now, what I’m trying to say is that it wouldn’t be unusual – for example – to go to the local tennis courts or the nearby shnooker hall to see a game of Stunt Double Wimbledon or Stunt Double The Crucible Sheffield.                 There was even a wedding for Wimbledon star stunt double John...

Advertisement Playing international cricket has been found to have an incredible effect on male pattern hair loss. Photo courtesy of Eva Rinaldi . At least a dozen international cricketers and former cricketers have found their hair restored before it was too late. Why? From the combination of wicket juices, red ball leather and the stress induced sweat that forms from playing an international sport at the highest level. So play international cricket now. Do you hear me, baldy? CRICKET

CHAPTER TEN: A MORE DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE EASTER RISING (PART ONE) Continuation from the end of Chapter 9 An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock, surreal autobiography by a fictional Irish literary figurehead, champion bodhrán player and broadcaster.                   When I say that I didn’t really take part in the Easter Rising, I was exaggerating. I’m not one for jumping on the bandwagon at the last minute, and I never did so when it came to taking part in the Rising. So I did take part in it. I was in Dublin at the time, working on my first collection of short stories called The Troglodytic Herbivore and Other Stories , and I was also co-writing a surreal, modernist, well-made play with the feminist Henry Gibson entitled Toast at the Odeon which we hoped would be produced at the Odeon because it would have made the title that bit more self-referential.       ...

CHAPTER NINE: THE CALL TO ARMS BY LORD KITCHENER, AND AN OVERVIEW OF MY LIFE DURING THE EASTER RISING, THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, AND THE IRISH CIVIL WAR (PART FOUR) Continued from Chapter 9 Part 3 .                 Air anus, we formed our little group of freedom fighters in our village one summer on my return home from the nation’s capital for a holiday. Charlo Mallooolly, John Fisherman-O’Reilly, Sean Tubridy O’Reilly, Tancred Moorphy M’Nally and myself, setting off along the rail tracks with the trains full of Brithishers chasing us. I was the brains of the operation as I had written a few anti-imperialist articles for republican publications – or "republications" as they were known – as well as a modestly successful book of poetry and a few advertising slogans. J ust a few of the "republications" in wh ich my work featured included An Phoblacht , An Tiocfaidh Ducky , and Ti ocfaidh 2: Chucky's Voodoo Night ma...

A Blue Peter phone-in competition in 2004 that involved the winner spending the night with Jimmy Savile has been exposed as fraudulent. Callers to the Blue Peter programme were given the impression that they could in fact be in with a chance of having a "Sleepover with Savile". However, the lucky prize winner - a television producer's niece - was in actuality handpicked from inside the BBC studios. Furthermore, there are reports circulating that she was not allowed anywhere near the late tv legend, and that repeated requests for the sleepover - from both Savile and the unnamed winner - were declined by television bosses. Television viewers have already been left traumatised with recent reports that Jimmy didn't care much for young boys. When recording his show Jim'll Fix It for the BBC, Savile liked to have "a good, healthy group of girls - as many girls as I can get my hands on" in his studio. He was often heard telling studio technicians "I want ...

CHAPTER NINE: THE CALL TO ARMS BY LORD KITCHENER, AND AN OVERVIEW OF MY LIFE DURING THE EASTER RISING, THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, AND THE IRISH CIVIL WAR (PART THREE) An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock, surreal autobiography by a fictional Irish literary figurehead, champion bodhrán player and broadcaster. Continued from Chapter N ine P art Two .                Often, the eight convicts in the cell would be replaced by eight different ones, much to the confusion of the guards who attended them, but they didn’t really know there were different people in the cell because, of course, all Catholics look the same to Protestants. I informed the cell of the plans of the Protestants, and the men were all shocked, but we began our own plans in earnest to counteract the nefarious endeavours of the Orangemen.                 A week later the...

CHAPTER NINE: THE CALL TO ARMS BY LORD KITCHENER, AND AN OVERVIEW OF MY LIFE DURING THE EASTER RISING, THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, AND THE IRISH CIVIL WAR (PART TWO) Continued from Chapter 9 Part 1 .                 Now, I won’t go into my own politics. I prefer to avoid the political quagmires that such talk engenders among my Irish brethren. As you can naturally discern, I prefer to tell tales of when I was a lad, the poverty we were living in, of how we stole a big tray of doughnuts from Mr Baker on Main Avenue and went running off down the road with the doughnuts affixed to a piece of string, tying them onto the back of Mark Flearty’s wedding carriage.                 Or when we were walking across Main Demesne and we stumbled across a cache of arms and ended up taking statistic pleasure in shooting the rabbits and we killed 42.6 % of th...

Watch as we brings you throu gh Six Degrees of Le onar do! Leonardo di Cypriot starred in Martha’s Room with Mer yl L yn ch and Diana Keaton. Photo by Firooz Zahedi Ronan Keaton sings in Westlife. They are connected by their Christian names. Westlife singer Brian McAddams left to pursuit a solar career. As everyone knows, he was going out with Australian singer and actress Delter Goodrem. Now, Delter was in Aussie soap Ramsay Squares, and who else was in Ramsay Squares in the early days but Rustle Crow? Rustle Crow and T0m Hinks have both got Grammy awards…and what did T0m Hinks star in hunting for secrets from the past? None other than Catch Me When I'm Done, which he was hunting for Leonardo di Cypriot in the 1950s!

Continued from Chapter 8 (Part 3) CHAPTER NINE: THE CALL TO ARMS BY LORD KITCHENER, AND AN OVERVIEW OF MY LIFE DURING THE EASTER RISING, THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, AND THE IRISH CIVIL WAR (PART ONE) An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock, surreal autobiography by a fictional Irish literary figurehead, champion bodhrán player and broadcaster.                 So that was the end of my family as I knew it. Of all the fifty odd children who survived childbirth, a mere one became an adult, both mentally and physically, or near enough to, and that was me myself. And a few others, of course. Malachy, swimming with monks, and a few others still.                 And with no work available to me when the factory closed down, the best place for me to go was the nation’s capital, to establish myself as a literary figurehead. To be Frank was ...