Sweary

With the details of the Department of Education’s Summer Works Scheme published last week, the whole of the Irish construction industry has battered smoking holes into their earsets, keyboards and estimating departments trying to get a cut of the action. I should know. I’ve been smack(ed up) in the middle of it, desperately forging connections with the dusty secretaries of convent schools, clamouring for the chink of light from the edge of an architect’s smile that might tell us we’re in with a chance, if we play our free match tickets right. Specifically, I’ve been contacting school principals. Have you got a very Irish name? Many of us have either a very Irish first name or a very Irish last name, so in this instance I must insist that you have both. Aine McCarthy? Donal O’Shea? Sean Quigley? Sure nobody could imagine you as anything else but an uber-Paddy, right? Well you wouldn’t be Irish enough for an Irish principal. No. Irish principals are the most Irish of the Irish Irish. Conor O’Sullivan? Irish principals spit in the faces of Conor O’Sullivans! You’ve gotta be Chonchubair O’Suilleabhain if you wanna cut it as a smug priomhoide with shamrocks flakin’ out yer lugs. Orla Ryan? Go dtuga Dia ciall duit, Orla Ryan, or Orflaith Ni Riain as you better be known from here on in, you English-loving slattern! When it comes to Irishing up your ainms, you can’t have enough randomly placed h’s, aigh’s and uair’s to satisfy an Irish principal. If you confidently assert that your name cannot be Irishised, you ain’t got enough Irish principals in your breeches. “But my name’s Stanislaw Jez!” you might cry, triumphantly, only to be whirled, molested and left for dead by marauding principals and their rabidly patriotic branding ethos. Welcome to the party, Seanan O’Ghesigh. So no time for blogging proper this weather. I’ve been blinded by pompous nomenclature and impossible addresses for schools with more fadas than funding. If I ever hear another word in that twisted tongue this week, I’m going to rampage through the Gaeltacht on a unicycle made of bazookas. And this from a closet nationalist! See you when I crawl back out of the poll coinin. Or whatever. Don’t correct me. I’m fragile, and also I don’t care anymore.

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Sweary