It Occurs to Me: Baby Trumps and Baby Powers

As Boris Baby Trump hopped off into the blue sunset, it was appropriate that he blamed kangaroos for his demise. He slammed committee chairman Harriet Harman, charging her with overseeing a 'kangaroo court'.

At the time of writing, advance publicity suggests that the results of the Privileges Committee into Baby Trump are devastating, so by the time you read this, it will be quite clear why he has gone all marsupial.

As a wain in Carrigart, I was occasionally sent up the town for ‘messages’ by some of the customers in Danny Logue’s pub. Danny was always good for a mineral or bag of crisps, and one day, watching with fascination, as he sold batch loaf and tins of spam in the shop side of his bar to the hungry drinkers, I heard ‘Willie’ ask for “A wee glass for the road and two Baby Powers for the pockets”. I knew that it was not unusual then to give children a hot punch to help them sleep if they had a heavy cold, but ‘Willie’ was a bachelor and so I wondered whose babies the Baby Powers were for. Ah innocence!

‘Willie’ also loved ‘sucky’ sweets, particularly of the mint variety, and when we weren’t altar serving, we sat behind him at Mass, and it was an experience I’ve savoured ever since. 

He sucked like a calf at the teat, ensuring dirty looks from some of the more beatific around him, but when it came time for Communion, he put the sweet into his pocket (where one of the Baby Powers had been secreted earlier in the week) and headed up the aisle. I can still see his long white tongue snaking out for the wafer, and the PP and a few of the beatifics recoiling in horror. When he returned to the seat, blessed himself etc., he stuck the hand back in the pocket and emerged with the wet mint, covered in fluff and other detritus, and re-commenced slurping.

Disappointingly, he never took out a Baby Powers to add glugging to the sucking. Why I recall him in the same breath as Boris is, that, like the former PM, he was very badly hinged, If you ever see the video of Baby Trump out jogging, it appears to all intents and purposes that a laboratory, or a woodwork class in a Tech, were responsible for attaching his torso to his arse.

‘Willie’ was hinged in a similar manner, so that when he made a spalter for his bicycle outside Logues, the arse would hit the saddle before the torso realised it should catch up!
All that being said, ‘Willie’ was a decent, honest, honourable man…not a description one could affix to ‘An Leanbh’ across the water!

Kiss and Tell and Hotter than Hell
Regular readers who pray regularly to the Man Above, hoping to bypass Peter at the gate, are probably envious of the likes of Ian Paisley Jnr., who wakes up every morning, convinced that he’s going to join his daddy in the Mansion on the Hill, because of ‘pull’. We understand ‘pull’ in Donegal, but tend to stick to prayer when it comes to ensuring our place in the heavenly queue. Back in 1974, the New York glam-rock shock band KISS, recorded their second album…’Hotter Than Hell’. One of the songs was called ‘Strange Ways, which read:
“Well, it's a strange place
That you've been living in
And it's a strange line
You've been delivering
I think I like it
But I'm not really sure
Don't wanna fight it
Just wanna feel some more
Strange ways, twisted days

I was reminded of this (bizarrely) when Ian Paisley Jnr. took KISS frontman Gene Simmons on a tour of The House of Commons recently. Ian, it turns out, is a big heavy metal fan (I think I saw him carrying one in a 12th July Parade!) and Gene, the craythur, is an authority on NI politics. He called for the return of Stormont and spoke of Junior’s daddy, referring to him as “...the legendary Ian senior and what he did for Ireland”.

Now in fairness, both Paisley’s are known for ‘inflammatory’ speeches so maybe Junior was taken by the fact that part of Simmons’s stage act was spitting "blood" (an effect made primarily from eggs, yogurt, red food coloring, and maple syrup) and "breathing fire" (spitting flammable liquid at a torch). Never, Never, Never!

I’m no fan of Fox News, but still, Simmons had a severe dose of the ‘buck sturdies’ there in 2017, when he was banned for life from the network after claims that he insulted and taunted staff members. He was appearing on Fox and Friends, and Mornings With Maria – to promote his new book, ‘On Power’. According to a Fox News source at the time , he barged in on a staff meeting, unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his torso, shouting: “Hey chicks, sue me!”

He also told ‘jokes’ about the late Michael Jackson and paedophilia, and made seriously mocking remarks about the intelligence of staffers. I have some sympathy with him about his assessment of Fox staffers, but Ian Snr. who famously insisted..”I’m not for turning!’...must be turning in his grave at the thought of Baby Paisley showing this buck around the hallowed halls of British Democracy. Never, Never, Never!

Although Simmons and Co gave up the makeup in 1983 or so, I’m told that from now on, they will go on stage wearing only a Sash, and very little else… just enough to tighten the haft of a spade!

Our Wee Rory
Leave our Rory alone, you big LIV bullies!
One executive said: “Now we can finally get Hideki [Matsuyama] and Jon Rahm. I would say every big name on the PGA Tour will get an offer. Except Rory. Nobody wants that little bitch on their team.” Better a little bitch than a corporate gang of sons of b’s!. Up Down!

A good slap
Billy Connolly once remarked that when his mother had administered him with ‘a good slap’, he wondered how bad a ‘bad’ slap was, considering the ‘good’ one was a damn sight worse! I think Billy was also the first man I heard referring to someone as ‘having a face like a slapped arse!’.

I was blessed in that I went to National School and was never slapped…the Principal was a thorough gentleman. (I got an odd ‘hammereen’ because dad was a Guard, but other than that!) However, I was so spoiled that when I went to College, the first ‘good slap’ with an 18-inch leather strap was a baptism of fire…6 in all, actually.

I met an old schoolfriend recently over a lock of pints, and he greatly added to the ‘slap’ vocabulary by recalling:
“Do you remember ‘so-and-so’?... Jays boys, he could hit you a ‘quare’ slap, sir…” And by the time our ‘meeting’ was over, he had progressed to receiving ‘an awful f….n’ slap’ and best of all, ‘a right looder of a slap across the bake!”. I’m wincing since!