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Everybody has the flu. For the last few weeks Killdicken is like a village caught in the throes of a mediaeval plague. People have taken to wearing masks on the street, in the shop, at the post office, but not in the pub, that would interfere with the consumption of the pint.
The Mother and myself escaped so far, but people have been falling sick all round us, left, right and centre.
Even Tinky Ryan got a bad auld dose, so bad that he ended up in hospital. As you know, Superquinn has joined him in the business and will be taking over from him when he decides to retire, or when the Grim Reaper chooses to cut the ground from under him. We were beginning to think that Superquinn’s first solo run at the job could involve the dispatch of her mentor to his eternal reward.
Such is the affliction in the area that one would almost need to mark the doors where the flu has struck, as they did in the Middle Ages.
The conversation in places like Killdicken generally concerns itself with the weather, and there has been much to talk about in that department of late, given the buckets and barrels of rain, hail and snow that have fallen on us in recent months.
However, the current conversation in Killdicken is totally taken up with the flu – who has it, what kind they have and how it’s manifesting. After hearing, overhearing and participating in a range of these conversations, I have decided to put my recollections down in verse to record the great flu of 2018.
The flu it has ravaged the country.
With all creeds and classes laid low,
From the man who pairs hooves and makes donkey shoes,
To the high-flying, top CEO.
It steals to your bed in the night,
Crawls into your ear in the day,
Sets fire to your throat and before you will know it
Turns you into a wet sop of hay.
Madge Quigley she got it last Friday,
While lambing a ewe in the shed.
An east wind blew through her five coats and three bloomers,
And swept her straight into bed.
Moll G got hers at the races,
A grand place for getting the flu.
Neither jodhpurs nor tweeds nor boots to the knees,
Could stop that auld thing getting through.
The priest cancelled mass here on Sunday: ‘Do yer prayin at home by yerselves,
Every cough spit and splutter could cause ye to suffer
And send ye to heaven or hell.’
The hunt it was cancelled on Monday,
There was no one to blow the hound horn.
There’ll be no ‘tally-ho’ or ‘look there he goes’,
No brandy and port on the lawn.
Pa Quirke got his dose on a Tuesday,
Doc Doherty’s surgery he blames:
“I went in to see why my blood pressure is high
“And came home with my chest up in flames.”
Killdicken United are frightened
As they start their defence of the cup,
Their striker and sweeper and champion goalkeeper
Are sweatin’ and splutterin and stuffed.
Cantwell and his happy young missus
Were cycling up hills and down dale,
But the lycra near melted as they shivered and sweated
When the virus it chose to invade.
They are rattled and punctured and flattened,
The chain has come off their health binge,
They may stay off the saddle from now to St Paddy’s,
Make a jigsaw, play drafts or just whinge.
My friends Todd and Whip at Drumbarrel
Were spared this affliction ’till now,
But it struck them in tandem, in hospital did land them,
Where no visitors are being
allowed.
So I sat there alone in the depot,
The master of all I surveyed,
From the cardboard and tins to the composting bins,
From the tip all around to the gate.
’Twas a foretaste of post Armageddon,
When the world is denuded of folk,
All that’s left of their stay is what they threw away
To see it like this is no joke.
Get the jab, take you vits and your tablets,
Stay out of the draughts and the rain,
Wrap up in your woollies, your long-johns and hoodies;
Don’t be swept by this virulent strain. CL
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