NEW CORK, NEW CORK

The revolution is coming, and the rebel county has started slowly but surely to suck me in, their anarchic proganda fashioning and moulding me against the imperialst Pale. Well not quite. On my first night, I took a little walk down the town, through the window of Burger King I saw blood splattered across the floor, and a bloke who had Cork's county colours oozing from a few orifices, chatting to some Gardai Shickalonees.
Yep, this was Cork.
A few yards down the road there was an ambulance outside McDonalds where - through the window - I could see a young lad laying prone and immobile on the stairs.
Yep, This was Cork.
The Gaza strip has nothing on St. Patrick's Street I'm telling you. I abandoned my little walking tour of Cork city at this point, bought a copy of the Echo as it was sung at me by a nearby vendor (literally sung, as anyone who has been in Cork will testify), and sat in The Bodhran pub to read it. Beside me there was a fella who was gazing melancholically into his pint. He raised his head to look at me, shaking his head in despair, and said:
"Superman's f*cking dead, boy!"
Yep, this was Cork.
I saw Tommy Tiernan on the Late Late recently (yes I watched it, I'm not ashamed, I'm proud!), who was talking about Cork:
"I love going down there, people say to you: 'Hello, Welcome to Cork, Wecome to Cork; you know the best thing about Cork is, is that no matter where you are in teh city, you can stop and say to yourself, "This is Cork"!... Yes I'm from Cork... it's my favourite thing about myself'... God help us if we ever have a president from down there, that's something that should never be allowed happen, can you imagine the international shame of it, in the U.N: 'Hello I'm the President of Ireland, but more importantly, I'm from Cork!'"
The following morning I was walking through the town again. A young girl cut across front of me, stopping suddenly to say to her friends in a perfectly stereotypical Corkonian drawl: "Oh Lang!" she cried, "I left my coat in Supermacs!"
Yep, this was indeed Cork.
Viva la revolution.

A TESTES OF STRENGTH

October 1st
My eyes flittered open and they were met with darkness. Weirdly, thirty seconds later my alarm clock gave me an annoyingly insensitive audio poke, sounding for all the world like evil laughter, its laughter coming to a derisive climax when I realised the awful truth: It was five-bloody-thirty! What clever bastard booked a 7 o’clock flight? Ah yeah, it was me. What shockingly handsome poor judge of time I was!
Well Rimmer’s Stag weekend would be something to look forward to; starting with a few pints of Guinness in Wootten Bassett. Despite having a name that sounds like you’d find it under the “severe” subheading in a medical dictionary, Bassett was a nice wee place that served a palatable pint of the Black stuff. Actually I believe Wootten Bassett is Anglo-Saxon for “farting hunting dog.” The last time I was here, Eoin asked me to get him a “sex-on–the-beach”, So I went up to the bar and said, “Hey, can I have a sex-on–the-beach?”, and he actually replied – and I’m not joking ya – “What… the drink?”
I wouldn’t mind, but were in the middle of Wiltshire, there wasn’t a beach for fucking miles. The barman looked suddenly sheepish as he recalled his own words, and hurriedly buggered off to fix me the drink
There were no such extravagant drinks this time around, it was straight Guinness all the way, and sadly, no offers of seaside nookie. If that had happened, I would’ve paid for the taxi fare to Weston-super-Mare meself. Weston-super-Mare? Actually, I’d walk to Inverness if I was given that sort of offer. The strangest thing about that night was the vision of Crapman, who sported new haircut that was as severe as Nazi Germany in a bad mood. In a moment of madness, he had dispensed with 40 per cent of his body mass. Personally, I call it follicilicide.
Anyway, with big plans for the next day, we hit the hay early, although in my semi-drunken state I wasn’t quite sure what those plans were. Something about painting our balls or something.
If Hans Blix had been in that minibus on the way to Bournemouth, he would have found ample evidence for the international community to invade that minibus. For had our collective booze-farts been used on the Kurds back in 1991, Saddam would’ve done a much more thorough job. In fact the fart-gas pressure inside that bus must’ve been so great that I’m surprised we didn’t all get the bends when we opened the door. Seriously, we almost had to eat our way out.
We already had our Paintballing gear on when Eoin arrived. As he donned his combat fatigues and his balaclava, he couldn’t resist saying “Jayz, this is just like home!” discreetly out of earshot of Rimmer’s British copper posse.
What happened next was a sheer massacre. Several times over. You know the tag-line to the movie Platoon that says “The first casualty of war is innocence”? Well it’s not; the first casualty of war is the first guy that gets shot, which happened to be me on more than one occasion. On our second game, I found myself the hapless foot-soldier standing in front of the flag-bearer, in amongst a hail of fluorescent green bullets. I was pummelled in under a minute. Now I know how all the Irish dudes felt in Braveheart. I tell ya, if I ever do go to war, I’d be the guy with the bright future and the pretty dame back home that has to get it in the opening act to highlight the tragedy. Well, at least I would be if I had a pretty dame or a bright future.
We kept careful stock of our ammo, to ensure we had enough for the final event. As a stag special, Rimmer and Tudor had to don nice big fluorescent jackets and were our only targets for the final game. So, my over-riding image is the poor bastards being pursued by a throng of commandoes hungry for blood. Unfortunately tackling someone before one’s wedding might result in your wedding-tackle being fecked, as Rimmer found out. I take it back: the first casualty of war is the one who gets a bullet wound to the knackers. Before we came, we were told by Rimmer’s fiancé Knoola: “Don’t shoot him in the back! He’s got a bad back!” But she never said anything about the goolies. Despite a brave stand-off, Rimmer had been let down by his Achilles bollocks, his love-blobs ironically crippled on their last night of freedom.


Rimmer: needs to acquire some holographic testicles.