Monday, 6 February 2012

What's a Resolution Centre?

Great shows last week kid. Great shows which sadly went unnoticed in a secluded hamlet in the hills above Drumquin. Amateur escapologist, the self styled, The Great McGenie, lay at the bottom of a deep lake, shackled with chains and confined in a steel casket. It was four days since the great McGenie had been lowered into the lake. A large crowd stood on the shore, waiting for the bold, McGenie to bob up at any minute. The parish priest approached McGenie's wife and said, "Muriel, do you not think four days is a long time for your husband to be at the bottom of the lake?" Wee Muriel, flicked ash from her cigarette and replied, "Ah, not at all father. Sure my Willie John, is just building up the suspense."
And so a fifth day passed without any sign of the great McGenie. But the people of Drumquin and surrounding districts are quite sure it's only a matter of time before the great McGenie escapes from his chains, opens the steel casket, swims to shore and runs into the loving arms of wee Muriel.
Tommy my cat, threw the Newsletter from him and yelled, "Nothing ever changes! 150 million will be spent in Belfast and diddly-squat for Clogher, Augher and Cullybaccy. Why do our culshie cousins, never get a piece of the pie?"
I laughed, clapped my hands and cried, "What would the Clampets in Clogher, Augher and Cullybaccy do with the money, but buy new wellingtons and produce even bigger middens. You have to have a them and us!" I yelled. "We fly, city folk are the "us" and the naked savages West of the Bann are "them."
"I suppose that's right," said Tommy. "It all goes back to Darwin's theory of evolution. Survival of the fittest. Why give money to Tyrone, where fierce, bloody, factional, infighting still goes on under the name of Gaelic football." "Tyrone!" I said with a shudder. "The last outpost of barbarity, uncultured, uncivilized , unwashed, where skulduggery and vile, villainy is perpetrated by men AND women, wearing flat caps and animal skins!"
"Tyrone!" said Tommy with fear in his eyes. "Thank God it's surrounded by bushes."
"Tommy," I said, "what's a resolution centre?"
"Darned if I know," said Tommy. "Why do you ask?"
I picked up the Newsletter and cried, "It says here, in black and white, that 18 million will be spent on creating a resolution centre on the site of the Maze prison."
"OH! I know now," said Tommy. "It's a big thing like the Post Office tower in London. Up on the top will be a restaurant serving the best food this side of the Pecos. Outlaws will gather from all parts of the country and seek closure for their past crimes-Capiche?"
"I still don't understand why it's called a resolution centre!" I yelled.
Tommy looked at me like a fool and roared, "The restaurant on top of the Post Office tower in London goes round and round when you're eating. Fanny by gaslight!, did the word, resolution, not give you a clue?"
I slunk away like the stupid, thick, low down dog I was. Resolution, the answer was staring me in the face!

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