Birthday Celebrations

What a great birthday show Kid. To mark the occasion, Tommy my cat and I listened to the show in our birthday suits. And poor Mr Coyle, God bless his little rickety legs, dragged himself in to take part in the celebrations. Ah, the wee doat.

"Mr Coyle is done!" said Tommy. "But the lad is going out in style."

I suppose at night Kid, you had a big showbiz party with all your friends, crisps, Maine America cream soda and as many as four, brightly coloured balloons, hanging from the ceiling. Oh how the, "Oh darlings this and oh darlings that" rang out as a Joseph Locke impersonator lustily sang, "The Road To Mandalay."

Then at the unearthly hour of half past nine in the evening, your showbiz chums all threw their legs on their respective bicycles and cycled off with bells ringing. To whom did you sell the rights? OK magazine, Hello, or the entertainment page in the Derry Journal? I bet the city of Derry never saw anything like it. Not since the night Dana came home from the European song contest and in a show of bravado sang, "All things bright and beautiful" as she was dangled out of the Guild Hall window by one leg by Phil Coulter.

Luckily Dana was wearing jeans, or "All things bright and beautiful" could have taken on a whole new meaning. On the night Dana came home, Sean Coyle, terrorist/ freedom fighter, called for a five minute stone throwing cease fire. Mr Coyle, with a lump in his throat said, "Lads, wee Dana has done us proud. Now let us do likewise by throwing these stones with precision and accuracy. Squad, throwing stones at the shins--FIRE!"

"See that Sean Coyle," said a wee woman standing at her door, "that Sean Coyle keeps the whole thing going, so he does. Just because the peelers arrested wee Rip Coyle on a trumped up charge."

"I call for a public inquiry!" yelled Mr Coyle. "A public inquiry that will be called the Rip inquiry."

Then a rubber bullet hit Mr Coyle on the rub-a-dub and he went down like a rubber duck.

"Well done that man!" roared General Ford.

When Wendy and the Pips came on, I yelled, "HITACHI" and changed into something more comfortable, my tangerine strait jacket with the buckles at the front. Lor love a duck, me and that strait jacket have been in some mad situations. As I passed an all night doughnut repair shop, Tubby Nolan leaped out, dressed as Count Dracula. Tubby flourished his long black cloak. Funny I never heard the oval one break wind and said in a sinister, sibilant hiss,

"Hello my dear. I need blood. Hauld out your auld jugular vein while I sink my gnashers into it."

Acting quickly, I whipped out a crucifix, snapped it in two and formed it into a rough approximation of a cross. Tubby leaped back like a scalded catamaran. "Get back you foul, black demon from radio Ulster!" I cried.

"A stake!" I cried. "I need a stake. But where can one get a stake at this time of night?"

Luckily Tubby knew a place and we had a lovely steak, with chips, peas, baby mushrooms and a side dish of prawn cocktail crisps and Mars bars.

All this and more have I seen as Noel Thompson tried again and again to leap the new ladies' fashion styles that had just appeared in, Mary Ann's Boutique.Mary Ann calls her exclusive boutique "The Big Dumplin." It's cash only. Mary Ann has a pathological fear of cards. Ever since the day she got her cards from McKay's industrial welders. She was a hell of a welder and she still carries a torch for her former profession.

Mary Ann didn't work on the Titanic, but she knew a man who did!