Considerable difficulty has been encountered in perfecting the invention, not because of any major snag, but because our research workers emerge from the laboratory day after day in a hopeless state of inebriation and are unable to give any coherent account of their experiments. One of our best men has had to be put away; absenteeism is rampant among others, who cannot face two consecutive days’ work owing to the paralysing hangover that is conferred by the first. This difficulty, however, is being taken care of. Soon a new type of gas-mask will be available and the great work will go on.
OUR AIM
Later, when ‘Trink’ has been perfected, the whole idea is to print the Irish Times with it. You will then get something more than a mere newspaper for your thruppence. You get a lightning pick-me-up not only for yourself and your family but for everybody that travels in your ’bus. Any time you feel depressed, all you need do is to read the leading article; if you want a whole night out, get down to the small ads.
I can see opposition: every great innovation must expect it. Vested interests, backstairs influence. The Licensed Vintners’ Association will make a row; newsvendors will have to hold an excise licence or possibly the Irish Times will be on sale only in hostelries; the Revenue will probably clamp a crippling tax on every copy and compel us to print under the title ‘Licensed for the Sale of Intoxicating News, 6 Days’. All that will not stop us, any more than the man with the red flag stopped the inevitable triumph of the motor car. And no power on earth, remember, can compel your copy of the Irish Times to close down at ten. You can read and re-read it until two in the morning if it suits your book, and even tear it in two and give your little wife a page.
I will have more to say on this subject and no wonder.
‘TRINK’ TO ME ONLY WITH THINE ‘I’s’
Our experiments with ‘Trink’, the new ink that exudes an insidious inebriating vapour, are proceeding apace. We are not yet at the stage when we can risk printing the Irish Times with it, but the other day we decided to use it for one or two posters intended for the country. The results, noted by our own plain-clothes narks who were on the spot, were quite satisfactory. A few people on their way to work in a certain town paused for a moment to spell out the placard (our educational system is weak remember) and to reflect for a moment on the news. The news was bad, as usual but the parties taking it in experienced a strange feeling of elation and well-being. They went on their way rejoicing and one of them, a staid school master, went into his class and straightway led them in a raucous rendering of ‘Alexander’s Rag-time Band’, bashing out the time on his desk with a pointer. A loafer who had propped himself for the day beside the poster collapsed at 12.15 and was rushed to hospital.
In another town the papers failed to arrive at the shops from the railway station. A young man charged with delivering them was found stotious in a doorway with his papers under his head. He was instantly dismissed by his employers and is now earning £25 a week in a munitions factory abroad, a thing that will give each of us furiously to think.
Thus the pattern of life changes and we move into the new and better world that is being prepared for us by the Myles na gCopaleen Central Research Bureau.
AS REGARDS MARY, the Rose of Tralee, it will be recalled that it was not her beauty alone that won one; ah no, ’twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning. Bearing this in mind, it occurred to the Myles na gCopaleen Research Bureau the other day to try to ascertain whether the truth still dawns in the eyes of the ladies of to-day. An investigator was sent out with instructions to engage a hundred ladies in conversation and examine their eyes for traces of the truth, dawning, fully dawned, declining or otherwise. He was away for a week and then returned to submit the following record of his researches:
45% Mild mydriasis, probably caused by the consumption of slimming drugs.
21% Ptosis of the lids due to defect in the oculomotor nerve, anisocoria, opthalmia, one or more small chalazions.
18% pronounced hyperthyroidism.
14% Evidence of retinal hemorrhages, papillary oedema, exophthalmos.
1% Mikulicz’s disease.
1% Paralysis of the orbicularis oculi.
‘No evidence of the truth ever dawning anywhere?’ we asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘and what’s more, I’m going to marry one of them.’
‘Which one?’ we asked.
‘Mikulicz’s disease,’ he said, ‘and she has three cute little yellow chalazions too.’
We agreed to put him on the married man’s scale and changed the subject by putting that damn lovely thing by Toselli on the gramophone.
AN Evening Mail advertisement of a few weeks ago tells me that
‘Sober workman will share room with same. 4/6 weekly.’
How sober are you if you insist on paying money to share a room with yourself? Don’t worry, there’s worse coming.
Though the Boyars and the old Tatar nobility no longer fill the higher cadres in the general staffs of the USSR’s armies, nevertheless within the past year the Supreme Command has shown itself to be possessed of such dash and gallantry, such a mastery of strategy, tactics, camouflage, subterfuge, and all the wily arts of offensive and defensive war that one is tempted to believe that a new military herrenvolk is emerging—in fact, a Red Herrenvolk.
UPROOT THE YOUTH ROT!
This is an ‘Irish Catholic’ poster. But rot doesn’t have any roots and even if it had, it wouldn’t be any good pulling it up because it would come away in your hand.
Next to be shaved pleased!
No reasonable solution has been received to the conundrum as to the meaning of the phrase Taisc do thicéad go seallfaidhe, which appears on the Dublin Transport Company’s tickets. I therefore keep my nice book prize. The phrase has no meaning but only schoolboys are slapped for this sort of thing.
Talking of transport, have our paunch-vested upper classes yet got over their first fine carless rapture?
The Myles na gCopaleen Research Bureau receives nearly a thousand letters a day (942 on Thursdays, however) from readers asking us to devise machines and engines that will solve their personal problems. Some of these problems are too intimate to be discussed here, but a Mitchelstown reader has approached us on what must be a fairly widespread difficulty. Nowadays it is nearly impossible to get matches and your cheap petrol lighter won’t work in the middle of the night because it lacks the stimulation that is afforded by the heat of the body when carried round in the pocket all day. This means you cannot tell the time at night and do not know when to eat your nocturnal dose of pills—the pills your doctor warned you would be no good unless you could pull yourself together and lead ‘a regular life’; and you know what I mean by that—please take the innocent smirk off your face.
Well, take a look at this apparatus we have devised. ‘A’ is an ordinary gas-jet with a modified vertical tap that is operated by a spring-loaded cord-pull (‘B’), which is erected beside your bed. When going to bed (or ‘retiring’, if you prefer unctuous round-abouts) you light the gas, which is adjusted to afford a tiny and almost invisible fan-tail of light. You have already driven a stout nail into the polished teak panelling behind the light, and on this you have hung your watch. Everything is now in order. When you wake up and want to know the time, you just pull down the knob at ‘B’ and there you are.
The Plain People of Ireland: But shure that’s no use. The gas is turned off at night, and in anny case there’s no gas in Mitchelstown.
Myself: You err. To-morrow I will print a diagram showing how to make your own gas. In any case, I have often been told that there does be great gas in Mitchelstown.
The Plain People of Ireland: Listen, surely it’s not that time! Lord save us, don’t say it’s twenty-five to one.
Myself: I’m a bit fast as a matter of fact.
The Plain People of Ireland: Oh, good. Thank heaven!
THE MYLES na gCopaleen Central Research Bureau is experimenting with the manufacture of intoxicating ice cream. The object
of this step is to help to prevent the collapse of the national moral owing to the growing shortage of spirits and beer. (How can you talk of a thing ‘growing’ if you mean it is shrinking?) Several potent freezerfuls of a pink treacly mess have been produced but the preparation is still far from perfect. While it induces a pale wan languorous inebriation followed by unheard-of depression, it tastes like sludge from a tractor’s sump, it cannot be digested even with the lavish assistance of enteric chemicals, and the fumes from it have a deadly effect on the optic nerve. This is not to say that the Bureau is giving up hope. Experiments continue night and day. Myles na gCopaleen, the da, has already decorated several employees for gallantry and distinguished conduct in the tasting room and has not scrupled to get them the best room in the hospital. In a moving address to them he said that however long the road, however sombre and bitter the setbacks they might encounter, they were determined to finish the task they had undertaken, they were resolved to rest neither night nor day until their objective was achieved and alcoholic ice cream had become a commonplace of Irish life.
By ‘commonplace’ he had in mind, no doubt, the daily court hearings of the future.
The sergeant stated that the defendant staggered badly after getting out of the car and smelt strongly of drink.
Defendant: I have not touched a drink for ten years.
District Justice: Did you have any of this new ice cream?
Defendant: Well, I had, your honour.
District Justice: How much had you?
Defendant: I had a twopenny wafer in Drogheda, your honour.
District Justice: Is that all?
Defendant: I felt a cold coming on me and had two cornets at Swords.
District Justice said he was determined to put down the growing practice of people driving around in motorcars and pulling up at roadside sweetshops to consume ice cream. If such persons feel they need ice cream, they must leave their cars at home.
The Sergeant said that the defendant had a small freezer in the back of the car which bore the traces of fresh ice cream; the cushions also had traces of wafer-crumbs.
District Justice: No doubt he said ‘Crumbs!’ when he ran into the other car. (Laughter.)
Defendant stated that he had bad teeth and did not like ice cream but took it as a tonic and also to prevent himself getting colds. He realised now that he had been foolish and was prepared to take the pledge and drink only whiskey in future.
District Justice inquired what was defendant’s capacity.
Defendant said he had often taken five or six cornets without suffering any ill effects or intoxication.
District Justice: Uneasy feels the head that’s had six cornets. (Laughter.)
Defendant said he would lose his job and British Army pension if convicted.
District Justice said that defendant should have thought of that before indulging in the deadly potions of the freezer. The next time ice cream addicts were brought before him the sentence would be jail. In the present case he would give the defendant a stern warning and fine him forty shillings.
ANOTHER THING that is going short in the emergency is midnight oil. A friend who burns a considerable quantity of it tells me he is down to his last drum and his supplier (holds out) (little hope) of getting more. But pray do not think (for one moment) that the Myles na gCopaleen Research Bureau is asleep when the problem of this kind is confronting the nation. Advanced experiments are in progress with a patent midnight grease which is made from turf, whiskey, offals and cider. This mess burns with a pale blue flame and is quite satisfactory for illuminating midnight attics. The trouble (as I needn’t tell you) is the smell. The smell is fearful. Already the Corporation has assured us that we are committing a nuisance by manufacturing the stuff. That, of course, is a scandalous charge (to lay) (at our door). Ireland must have midnight oil or a suitable substitute, otherwise it will disappear from civilisation. Without midnight oil the Irish Academy of Letters will (find it impossible to function) and even I will have to put aside my (monumental) work on Inorganic Geometry. Anybody who has a B.A. will not be able to proceed with his (or her) plan of reading the entire works of Dusty Evsky this winter. Chaos (will reign). Light-starved students will riot in the streets. Midnight-oil-tankers standing in the docks will be looted. Labour will challenge a general election.
That is why we are going to keep on trying to de-stink our inflammable treacle.
FURTHERMORE
Burners of midnight oil are not the only class who are suffering. The (acute) shortage of plate glass is causing serious embarrassment to people who live in glass houses, and our Research Bureau has been (inundated) with (shoals of) letters imploring us to see about manufacturing a substitute, ‘opaque, if necessary.’
‘It’s like this,’ a prominent person who lives in a glass house said to me the other day, ‘by (exercising the greatest restraint) I can let six days of the week go by without … well … doing what we people who live in glass houses find it impossible to resist doing. On the seventh day (with the best will in the world) nothing will stop me from rushing out and firing a stone. Just one stone. And you know the result. Showers of stones and filth and brickbats descend on my glass house and smash twenty or thirty panes. My glazier tells me that after next week he will have nothing more for me. Putty has been cornered and can only be got in the black market at scandalously (inflated) prices. What am I to do? What’s (going to become of me)?’
I mumble something about try to see what we can do, all for the best, stern and trying times, all must (be prepared to make sacrifices), war over in another year, crisis of civilisation.
‘It’s all very well’ (voice now shrill) ‘but we have to live too. What is the Government doing? The Government will have to (wake up and) do something because we are the most numerous class in the community. There are at least 400,000 people in Eire living in glass houses. Are their (claims) to be ignored? Do they (count for nothing)?’
And so on. Even that shifty class, wire-pullers, are complaining of the shortage of wire. Our Bureau these days is put to that essential accessory of its collar, the pin.
THE RESEARCH BUREAU is facing up to the problem posed by the jam shortage. The proposal to generate jam from second-hand electricity is being thoroughly investigated and a spokesman prominent in industrial jams—perhaps too prominent—revealed last night that experiments show that the inquiry ‘will not be fruitless’. At present it is impossible to say more but an official spokesman stated that it is ‘not unlikely’ that the ESB and the sugar-beet people will be approached not to secure their co-operation but with a view to securing their co-operation in this vital industry. At the outset it is believed that a small army of collectors, recruited by competitive examination, will be sent out all over the country collecting, grading and cataloguing all sorts of electrical refuse (and fuse, of course). This ‘raw’ material will be absorbed by a factory (to be built somewhere in Ireland) where the new ‘jam’ will be degenerated into immense watts, pardon me, vats. Black and red currant will probably be the most popular varieties, though, at a later date, it may be possible to manufacture a limited quantity of alternating. In addition it is proposed to establish a cottage industry, probably in Donegal, where ohm-made jam will be produced for the carriage trade. A great advantage of the scheme is that it by-passes the bottling and carton problem since the new confiture will be distributed on the mains. Also the jam will be broadcast three times daily over wave-lengths to which only the purest fruit juice will be added. There is some talk of a secret plumb jam, a savoury but perpendicular mess which it is rumoured will be extracted from the uprights of old doors. (Here, according to taste insert a wretched joke about traffic jams, or if an educated person, murmur:
‘Jam! Jam! (Non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et …’)
RESEARCH BUREAU
BEFORE the leaves of autumn fall, the Research Bureau, spurred on by the exhortations of Sir Myles na gCopaleen (
the da) will have provided new patent emergency trousers for the plain people of Ireland. These garments, conventional enough in appearance, will be fitted with long eel-like pockets reaching down to the ankles. The pockets will be the exact diameter of a bottle of stout and not by any coincidence, for they are designed to deal with the nuisance of those brown-paper Saturday-night parcels. It will be possible to stow four stouts in each leg. At first, walking in the ‘loaded’ position will necessarily be rather slow and straight-legged but practice will tell in the long-run, which should be undertaken only after short runs have been mastered.
What will happen if a man gets an accidental blow in the leg and has his bottles smashed? Nothing. The pockets are stout-proof and the beer will lie safely in the bottom until it can be syphoned into a jug, or even into a guest’s mouth, in the privacy of the home. Indeed, many men, disdaining the rather precious affectation of bottles, will have their trousers filled with draught stout or porter and saunter home on their puffy, tubular and intoxicating legs. Where bottles are discarded, however, one must be careful to avoid overcrowded trams and ’buses. Should a fat lady sit down beside you and crush you with her great girth to make way for her loud children, great cascades of stout may emerge from your pockets, ascending to the roof and drenching everybody with the frothy brew.
Best of Myles Page 13