Shneer

Tweet How was Saint Patrick's day yall? Did ye go to mass? I remember going to mass on Saint Patrick's day when I was very young. Down da brown back of the church, breathing in hot booze fumes and candle smell, chilling with the wrecked winky oul fellas with shiny patches all over their crumply suits. Yah, our family was one of the ones that loitered shamefully at the very back of the church in order to make a quick escape before communion. I never got that, why half the church would slink slyly out the door just before communion. It always made me feel shabby and a bit sinful.

But then again, I always felt a bit shabby and sinful at mass. I was a sniggerer. Couldn't help it. As soon as the sermon started my mind would invariably wander to a stoopid joke from school the week before (eg: what do square testicles give you? cubic hair), or I'd notice an old woman's ridiculous Kells perm, or, even worse, my twin brother would dare me to surgically remove a single curl of purple hair from said perm. Five minutes into any sermon, and it was game over as far as Storkboy and I were concerned. We'd make eye contact, and that was it. An excruciating minute of rigid trembling then a big dirty shameful snort of laughter. We always got in shite.

Serving mass was worse. Because then your snigger was in full view of the priest and the congregation, and the consequences tended to be brutal. Storkboy found this out one unfortunate Easter Sunday when he served mass with a bunch of messers who were all obviously jonesing for a snigger from minute one. The conditions were too serious and too quiet, the priest too much of a pompous bollox; things fell apart, the centre couldn't hold etc. A whispered comment near the end - something along the lines of "yer mother's a snowblower" - and pure convulsions broke out on the altar. Spasms. 

"lads, he bought the hat in the toy section in Dom Tighe's last week" "Shhhh"  "I swear. My mother saw him" *SNIGGER*

The priest, a self styled hard-ass weirdo who used to smoke like a train and wear a big black fedora, was in sadistic form that day. Straight after mass, he was all matey smiles and good sport with the lads who were expecting a tip for doing the easter service. He took them outside to his car, still grinning. "Come over and look in the window", he said. "Have a good look. Those are the easter eggs ye would have got if yis didn't make a sneer of my mass". He got in the car and left them for dust. He had a smart revvy car.

My brother thought about that easter egg for months. He swore it was massive, like one size up from your standard issue. I'd doubt that, but I felt extremely sorry for him. I gave up serving the year before because I couldn't hack the early weekday morning masses, and this would have been one of his rare opportunities to convince me it was a worthwhile endeavour.

Although, I did get jealous when I heard about the servers' tour to Mosney later that year. All sorts of stories about that one still float around - like the group-mooning incident enabled by the fact that the lower halves of people in funtropica swimming pool could be viewed aquarium-style over the chips counter. Not to mention X, Y, or Z returning victoriously from behind some shitty dodgem contraption waving an oyster scented finger at their bug-eyed mates. A holy grail of sorts for a twelve year old.

Ah fuck it; you know what, I'm still jealous I missed out on Mosney that time.

MP3: Bibio-Wake Up

Bibio's latest album, Mind Bokeh is three or four different varieties of ace. Nothing on the relatively one-note Ambivalence Avenue indicated such pop smarts. It's an album of the year for sure. And a brilliant answer to a what-if question that crossed my mind before - what if Boards of Canada composed pop songs?