MERGING PARTICLES

Great show yesterday Kid. Tommy my cat and I listened to the great show, with two blonde hedgehogs super glued to our heads. We were pretending to be Jedward! We were competing to see who could be the most innocent and sweet. Tommy won, when he did something very cute, wet and childish in his little flared trousers.

"Thomas," I yelled, "is there no length you would not go too, no trick you would not stoop to, no Machiavellian knavery you would not resort to, so you could win a simple bet?"

"NONE!" yelled Tommy. "And don't you forget it!"

I was standing at a bus stop when I was joined, by Julian Symmons. Lynda Byrons and Donna Trainor and the conversation, as it invariably does, got round to the big, Hadron Collider.

"What is thon great big thing anyway?" cried Jullian. And him standing there with a face on him like a Jaffa orange.

"I don't know," said Donna Trainor, "but, according to the boy who comes in to check my sound levels, it's a great, big, circular yoke that is buried deep underground, to keep the rabbits from breeding in it."

"In the name of goodness!" said Jaffa head.

Lynda Byrons took a firework out of her designer handbag, lit it, threw it after a coal lorry and said, "Have youse two lost the bap? Listen to me NIGH! The GREAT, BIG, LARGE, HADRON COLLIDER is a dating machine for single particles. You put a male particle at one end, a female particle at the other end, and then you send them flying towards each other at terrific speed. When they hit each other they merge. Particles don't get married, they get merged."

"Oh, that's SO romantic!" cried Donna Trainor.

"Romantic my aunt Nellie," said Jaffa face. "Could they not just go to the pictures and have a fish supper after, like we used to do?"

"Oh Julian!" cried the two girls, "There's no romance in you, so there's not."

"No romance in ME?" screamed Jaffa face, "The both of you come down this back entry with me and I'll show you romance."

Lynda and Donna were still shrieking with laughter as they climbed into the bus.

Jaffa face was thrown off for not having the correct fare. Oh you should have heard him. You should have heard him.

I met Tubby Nolan coming out of Ann Summers, with a box under his arm that screamed-Wonderbra!

"Has it come to this?" I yelled. "Is this the last resort for your gigantic man boobs?"

"Keep your voice down" yelled Tubby, "in case big Audrey hears. I buy a dozen Wonderbras every Christmas to keep my Terry's chocolate eggs in."

"I don't believe a word of it," I cried. "You'll be telling me next that you buy tights to keep your brussel sprouts in."

"How did you know THAT?" yelled Tubby, as he walked away with little, tiny steps and a look of pain on his big, harvest-moon face.

All this and more have I seen, as Frank Mitchell counted down the ten best garages in Ulster, to get an oil change for a German Fokker World War Two plane.

Frank is scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

I think the end is in sight.

What a Christmas present for the people of Ulster!