ONLY FOR MY PUSSIE I'D GO MAD

On Monday, which wasn't pancake Tuesday, I leaped out of bed with Alacrity, pushed a pound coin into his hand and whispered, "Give me a call when you learn how to work a telephone." Alacrity nodded and went off to look for Clarity and Transparency, the other two members of the folk group Agreement. I looked down the street. Every doorway held a Milly. Each Milly was wrapped in either a blue or pink dressing gown. The Millies were shod in fluffy bedroom slippers and every tobacco stained hand contained a cigarette. I stood and listened to the dawn chorus of the Millies. "So, I said to him and he said to me--and I said, "What do you think I am?" and he said--and I said, "Sure I'm not even sure if it's yours."
Ah, you can keep the country, give me auld black Belfast, with the Millies twittering and the winos coughing their lungs up in cardboard boxes. I stood there and sniffed the smoky air, as a hundred thousand chimneys, turned the sky black, with the smoke from a hundred thousand Ulster fries. A wee man in a muffler, with the paper under his arm, looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and growled, "See me Hi? I'll walk up any damn road I like, so I will."
"Good morning, Reverend Hamilton!" I shrieked, "See you in church-at my funeral."
Belfast, where would you get the like of it? Home of the Titanic and Van Morrison, one launched in the Lagin and the other lunched in the White House. Belfast, built on a solid foundation of soda bread and Woodbine. Belfast, where the man are all called, Sammy and the girls are called, Hi-You.
After breakfast, consisting mainly of food and liquids, Tommy my cat and I played at being the Kray brothers. I played Reggie Kray, Tommy played Ronnie, because Tommy is, how shall I put this? more--sensitive than me. Oh what fun we had. Tommy nailed my hand to the window sill, then I tied Tommy into a chair and pulled out three teeth with a pair of dirty pliers. Oh how we laughed. "This is the best game ever." lisped Tommy, with the blood running down his feline chin. "Yes it is!" I yelled, "and the great thing about it is--we only ever hurt each other."
I was reaching for the power drill when, rat-tat-tat. Tommy and I stood quite still.
"Did you hear that?" I whispered, "Yes" whispered Tommy, "it sounded like tat-tat-rat."
"It was no such thing," I hissed, "it was rat-tat-tat." "I beg to differ," said Tommy, "what I heard was-tat-tat-rat." Then, the sound came again, rat-tat-tat.
"By gum you're right" said Tommy, "It was, rat-tat-tat."
"But what could it signify?" I muttered. "Hard to tell" said Tommy. "It could signify the end of civilisation as we know it." "No, no" I said, "It's too early in the mornin."
Tommy kick-started the computer and Googled in, 'rat-tat-tat'.
We stood there with mouths agape and whispered in unison," rat-tat-tat, a knock at the door."
"Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs," cried Tommy and true to his word-he did. I found my voice under a dirty dish cloth and yelled, "Is someone out there going, rat-tat-tat on my front door?"
"Yes!" cried a voice from without. "Who is it?" I yelled. "Me." said the voice. "What do you want?" I cried. "I want to come in." yelled the voice. "Why?" I roared. "Because I'm fed up standing out here." said the voice. "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" I yelled and I rolled the huge boulder away from the door and opened it.
When we saw who it was, Tommy and I cheered and clapped our hands. Lor' love a duck, if it wasn't only the bonny wee Lord Laird, he of the Ulster/Scots association, don't you know and all that malarky. Lord Laird stood there resplendent in tartan kilt and freshly shot sporran and yelled, "HOOTS!" "No thank you," I said, "I'm off it until Lent," Bonny wee Lord Laird, took out a bonny wee silver box, took a pinch of hoots and sniffed it up his hooter. "Ah, that's better" he gasped, as he clung on to the tall boy who was standing trembling in the corner. Lord Laird rolled back the carpet, which was some job, due to the fact that we didn't have one, then he said in a very Scottish way, "I have been practising a little something for Burns night. I want to know what you think of it and before we could stop him, he gave a spring and did a hand stand in the middle of the room with his bonnie wee kilt hanging over his head. Tommy and I looked at each other.Sso it was true, then, before we could speak, bonny wee Lord Laird yelled out, "What do you think of that for a table lamp?". At this point the cat had got my tongue, so I looked at Tommy and Tommy roared, "It's good, but it's not right, Steven Nolan does a far better impersonation of a wee tea pot, complete with sound effects." Bonny wee Lord Laird, turned into a wee dour Scottish mon, grabbed his kilt and ganged hame.
As I jumped into bed with Alacrity, later that night, I pressed another pound into his hand and said, "What are the chances of that happening--EH?"
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And if you can't tell stork from butter, you should not be let near big birds.