The mere mention of breeds of dogs causes an uptick in the hits Malcolm Refellow’s Home Service receives. For some reason Rottweilers seem the most effective.
[Oh, goodness me! It’s happening again!]
- Produce the most close-analysed piece: zero recognition.
- A scintillating book review? Nada.
- A jaunty account of an outing? Zilch.
- A profound study of whatever? Forgeddaboutit!
But:
- a cuddly pooch, or — in the matter of Rottweilers — an uncuddly one;
- (as above, right: think about it) a nice wee pussy to stroke [careful there, Malcolm!];
- as for ornithology, tits and cocks or even a photogenic penguin?
Wa-hey! Stratospheric!
Any or all raise the response rate quicker than a hack at Iain Dale’s trim little ankles.
To Arthur, before Diageo got him!
So Malcolm felt a frisson of recognition in yesterday’s piece by Alan O’Riordan for the Irish Times Arts page. You really know what colour your bar-towel is with a title like:
Fresh draughts of literary history
promising that
the literary history of the pint of plain is stout and illustrious too.
Then we come to the full measure with:
Undoubtedly, the most famous celebration of porter comes from the poet laureate of stout, Flann O’Brien:
When food is scare and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan
When hunger grows as your meals are rare
A pint of plain is your only man . . .
Then comes O’Riordan’s own reflection on a fortunate piece of happenstance:
O’Brien’s Workman’s Friend contains what might just be the most quoted verses on our present subject. Yet the joke on reciters addressing a creamy pint is that the poem began life as O’Brien’s entry in a UCD contest to write the most banal poem.
That’s like finding that Newton’s law of universal gravitation was originally a submission to the Orchardman’s Journal. Or that Einstein not only worked in the Bern patent office, but, relatively speaking, also compiled the crossword for the in-house journal.
And so we drain to the dregs …
Somehow, suddenly, across nearly five decades,
… a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles Malcolm’s sight.
A party of Trinity Fabians are ensconced in the unreconstructed back-bar of O’Neill’s in Suffolk Street. The evening has stretched out. Pints have been consumed. The troubles of the world are definitively laid at the door of the filthy capitalistic fat-cats and the running Rottweilers of Western imperialism.
The great Bob Mitchell, from Kinnegad in the County Westmeath, and one of Malcolm’s begetters, looks deeply into the last glass of the night. He reflects:
How many angels can you drown in a pint of stout?
Malcolm Redfellow's Home Service 