All the fun of the festivals

We had our usual festival last weekend. Well, I say the usual festival. We had a festival and we have it every year but, as usual, it was at a different time with a different person running it and with a different name.

Last year was the Kilsudgeon summer festival, but Dinny Sheehan decided he wanted to organise the Ultimate Fighting Championship or Bludgeon Kilsudgeon as it was known. That oul’ Conor McGregor sort of fighting. Poor Dinny. One of Dympna Darby’s young lads lied about his age and got into the ring and then got hurt and sued. I wouldn’t mind, but he didn’t even fight. He tripped over the ropes coming in and he fell heavily.

Although whatever way Ryan Darby would fall, he’d fall heavily. The young fella is very fat but the whole family are. I see herself in the Lidl and the trolley loaded up with oul’ rubbish. ’Twouldn’t be my business to say anything, of course, but ’tis we’ll be paying for it.

Then it turned out the public liability insurance Dinny had for the competition was wrong. He made some mistake on the website and instead of saying Ultimate Fighting he picked out “Web Design” on the little wheelie thing, “Field” or whatever you’d call it.

“I was doing it on my phone, Ann. A fierce fiddly thing to work out,” he said. “The cost of insurance has this country ruined and then when you go to claim something, the blackguards try to wriggle out.”

So that’s the end of Dinny organising anything now. The judge threw out the case (TG) because the young Darby was spotted out on Leaving Cert night doing breakdancing. Or trying to. But Dinny was very shook after it.

So, in the meantime, they got a harvest festival going. There was an official homecoming for the girl of the Richardsons who went to the Olympics doing dressage. We wouldn’t know them that well now, although Himself is fascinated with Mrs Richardson.

“We need more of that type around here, Ann,” he says. “The Quality.”

Olga Richardson was to do a demo of the dressage in the field but there was a mix-up over the music so it was a bit odd. The horse was tippy-toeing away and whoever was in charge of the sound put on some sort of gangster rap music or hoppity hop, is it called?

They were going to change it but then someone said that if you change the music in the middle of the dressage it would nearly be worse. It would set the horse back years. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but anyway the horse was trotting around with “EFF THIS and YOU’RE ONLY A B*TCH” blaring out over the speakers and small children running around the place.

Then we had Miss Kilsudgeon, the Woodbine of the Land. A sort of a Rose of Tralee thing. I wouldn’t pay much attention to it only suddenly there was Freya, my sister Geraldine’s girl, up on the trailer with the rest of them.

Except, of course, Freya being Freya she couldn’t do it normally. For a start she was wearing a gag and the sash across her said “Miss Ogyny”. And you know I was looking at it for ages going: “What townland is Ogyny?” Until my daughter Deirdre who was with me said: “It means anti-women Mam, it’s a sort of a word those feminists use.”

“Shur aren’t we all feminists, Deirdre?” I was about to say until it was Freya’s turn to do the interview and she wouldn’t answer any questions except holding up a sign that said: “Pretty girls shouldn’t speak their mind.”

There were a couple of boos, but Father Donnegan said: “Aren’t you a great girl altogether to be getting up here with your beliefs?”

And then people clapped. I don’t think Freya was expecting that at all and she looked speechless. Even with the gag. At least she didn’t fall, though. That’d be some claim. CL