Boyne Writers Group

BOYNE WRITERS GROUP
Trim, County Meath, Ireland
are holding a

Competition for satirical work (prose or poetry)

in commemoration of Jonathan Swift, the author of such works as Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal. This year's theme was prompted by the sudden interest among prominent dignitaries - so far, Queen Elizabeth and President Obama - in paying a visit to Ireland this year.

Theme 2011: Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World: Ireland 2011

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RESULT

The result of the Boyne Writers Swift Festival Satire competition 2011:

1. Elizabeth Power, Galway. Oh Come, all ye faithful.

2. Maureen Gallagher, Galway. We are where we are.

3. Margaret Costello, Drogheda. Letter from Christine LaGarde.

The three winnning entries below.

The judge was Donal Kelly, RTE.

Judge's comment: Tight, spare, writing and lightness of touch lifted the winning entry clear of the pack. In contrast, many of the others made heavy weather in referencing the faults of builders, bankers and politicians. Four years into the recession it was all a bit passe. The exception was the runner-up who showed imagination and humour and gave us a neat Swiftian ending.

The following were shortlisted:

Peter Goulding, Dublin - One's visit to the former colony of Ireland - May 2011
Sean Kenny, Co. Meath - Hibernia, here I come!
Oliver McDonagh, Co. Meath - Overshadowed
Aine Tierney, Cork - Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Ireland 2011
John Clarke, UK - EYES ONLY: DPRK Minister Of Energy
David Rowell, Dublin - Saint Patrick's Snake tour
Roy Murray, Co Meath - Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Ireland 2011
Sean Lyons, Kerry - Export Led Recovery
Frank Murphy, Co Meath - With Mr Gulliver

Winner: Elizabeth Power: OH COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL

'Time for your Potassium,' he says plugging another tube into the cannuala.

'Yummie,' I reply.

The hospital corridor has been silent as a ghost ship all day but now high heels make their way down and yes -come to a stop outside my door.

A young woman with a Santa hat introduces herself as the Thompson rep. 'All right then?' she asks, sliding by the bed clutching a magazine. 'I bought the other patient a chocolate Santa but you know,' she looks at the drip and puts the magazine on the bed.

'You wouldn't have got home anyway with the snow,' she adds.

I nod. I am indeed lucky to be here on Christmas Eve with an infected gall bladder and the fourth day of nothing to eat or drink. She turns towards the window and forgets about me. I close my eyes and wait for the heels to turn.

When I open them again I reach for her magazine. March 2010 jumps out from the cover. Nine months old then and someone has already done the crossword.

I let it slip to the floor.

Was it only a week ago I was speeding down an English motorway, minus six degrees flashing on the dashboard, passing cars covered in white? Grinning like a hyena, I was getting away from 'it' where 'it' was a series of disasters that accompanied the great festive season; goodwill and cheer to all men. How bad you ask? Bad enough to abandon two children, an aging mother and a cat called Mozart. Let me give you a snap shot;

'Shingle bells ,shingle bells, shingle all the way' my brother in law slurred down the phone in 2009 while I lay in bed, scratching blisters, whining in pain and wondering what young pup gave me this version of hell.

'Just what could go wrong cooking turkey?' my sister asked each year. She got her answer in 2008. You turn the grill knob instead of the oven knob. Other questions answered that year were; how much incineration can a turkey take and do magic bags melt? A lot and yes.

In 2007, marriage was still fashionable and too much fleurie made me do it.

'I can't believe you're texting her,' I said.
'You just had to scroll,' he said.

So here I am, 2010, in the land of saints and scholars waiting to be released from this god awful holiday. Outside, appropriately enough, is a graveyard. To pass the time I study the visitors and count the red glow lights shining like cat eyes from behind the stones. Twenty eight so far to cheer up the dead.

The phone vibrates on the locker and I open my daughter's Christmas Eve text.

Mother, I am trying to buy a book for granny but I can't find the granny section.
I should have brought that child to a bookshop.
Ask the person at the desk, I text back.
The man says there's no granny section. He wants to know what author she likes.
Martina Cole.
'Full on granny, is she?' The man wants to know.
Dear God, what is mother reading?
I'm in hospital. Gall bladder problem. Nothing to bad. Don't worry.
Not again. You really need to let Jesus into your life.

There could be other people in this hospital - it's just I haven't seen them. This could, after all be a plot to kidnap me. Margaret Kelly and my one previous holiday to Ireland comes to mind.
1965:
'Go play with the neighbours. Nice Irish girls. Your age. Go on. Be friendly,' my aunt cheerily pushed me out the door towards the Kelly's.

I dutifully arrived in my best dress to the farm - all of ten years and ready to play. Margaret and her sister invited me to their tree house in the bushes. Up they climbed and me after them, nimble enough. I surprised myself putting one foot in front of the other. In time we reached a rough lump of wood strung between the branches and we perched up there while I looked around.

Good distance from the ground, I thought. Not sure how I'm going to get down.
Margaret, the older one was looking at me with an odd glint. She recovered a book from her pocket. 'Now' she said, 'it's time for a history lesson.'
'You're not getting down 'til you apologise,' she said A LONG TIME LATER.
'For what?'
'Cromwell and oh - the famine too.'

Elizabeth Power is a graduate of an MA in Writing (2007) and BA in Women's Studies from NUI Galway, Ireland. In 2009 she received a Scholarship to attend Banff Arts Centre, Canada. She has published poetry in Crannog and Writers Seeking Lovers and she was also a featured reader at Over The Edge library series Galway in 2010.

Second: Maureen Gallagher We Are Where We Are, Ireland 2011

Before

Julius Cowells' centurions set up the annual royal marquee near the racecourse, just as their ancestors had always done, tradition being alive and well. Like in the time of the Coliseum, God be with the good old days. They order in big feeds of hogs, cows, veal and gallons of wine. The patricians loll around in Hospitality, hollering their heads off, too drunk to register fully the true import of the collapsing economy.

"Crisis? What crisis?" yells invited guest Berticus, Julius' predecessor, above the noise, "Them naysayers should all go off and top themselves."

He gives the two-finger salute to Seanie the Fitzpatricus, affectionately named, who has just burst into the marquee on wheels, laughing like a lunatic and racing about the place, in danger of toppling the tent in the process. "Ye boy ye!"

"Let them tighten their belts anyway, to be on the safe side," roars Julius Cowell, in his cups and oblivious to everything outside the feast.

"They're living beyond their means," snorts Tiberius Hockney, who has made a ghost appearance, always good for a recital of his State-of-the-Nation party piece. Then, showing a deep knowledge of Joyce, quotes, "Shite and onions!" as Julius rushes off to the vomitorium.

"Where's me bonus?" bawls the Fitzpatricus, the man destined to achieve the breathtaking feat of slicing a country off at its knees.

"Wait'll after the budget, you greedy fucker," shouts the drunken Julius on his way back from a quick gag, `"only jokin', you oul eejit, you'll get your bonus." He breaks into song,

"Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen... "

"Who's robbin who?" asks the wily Willicus.

And so on and so forth.

The Fall
The banks and developers have all lost their bearings, their balls, and everything else in a casino.

The mighty O'Quinn on his soapbox, lamenting: "Only one billion left for to feed my poor unfortunate family." The leader, Julius Cowell, throwing his toga over his shoulder in a special public appearance, orders the spread of pain. "We must spread the pain," he says magisterially. Bryan Brutal, tribune for agony, takes to the job with gusto, out and about selecting citizens at random, drilling into root canals without anaesthetic. Howls are heard as far away as Iceland where they have more than enough of their own howling going on. Everywhere you go, folk at kitchen tables, staring at blots on oilcloths, free men throwing themselves off tall buildings. The country is in flitters.

After
When at last he sees the writing on the wall, Julius Cowell steps down, but not before rewarding his trusty henchmen, both public and private, for their loyalty and support. This he does out of the cartload of bucks borrowed from the heathen Maximus Lucretius from far away beyond the Rubicon. Julius is no sooner off into the sunset than Maximus, wouldn't you know, arrives at Hibernia's door to demand his pound of flesh in terms of interest and debt repayments. Maximus Lucretius means business.

"I got none of that money," cries Hibernia, pregnant again and destitute, " I don't have anything to give."

Maximus looks around, taking everything in. Fingers the pearl handle of his dagger.

"You have assets."

"Assets?" shrieks Hibernia, alarmed, "What assets?"

Maximus nods in the direction of an old fork and hoe resting against the gable end of the thatch.

"But without our tools how will we grow food?" Hibernia wails, shivering, pulling her thin shawl around herself, "What are we to eat?"

Maximus calmly eyes the infants in the sandpit.

"You have babies, don't you?"

Explanatory Notes

Berticus: Bertie Ahern
Seanie the Fitzpatrick: Sean Fitzpatrick (Anglo Irish Banker)
Tiberius Hockney: Charlie Haughey
Willicus: Wille O'Dea
O'Quinn: Sean Quinn, businessman
Brian Brutal: Brian Lenihan
Julius Cowell: the leader
Maximus Lucretius: foreign leader
Hibernia: Ireland

Third: This is a letter to a friend from Christine LaGarde, aspirant to the chief post in the International Monetary Fund.

Cher Jean, mon ami, mon amour. I haven't time to actually spend with you, as you will 'ave 'eard that I'm trying to get the new job.

Last week I went to that island on the way to New York. Was it Iceland, Greenland? Non, non, the cold one, Ireland. When the post is mine, I must see the best way to get them to pay up. Their banks lent money to tout le monde to build hotels and apartment blocks in Bulgaria. They seemed to think that countries with sunshine, of which they have none, were goldmines.

The towns here look very empty, so I thought perhaps they 'ave no money. Then I saw that outside every town there are those German shops, with their carparks full of the new cars they bought just before they stopped being able to pay for their rancho roundies which is what I believe they call their 'omes.

I called into two of these 'omes, but no one was there. Then on my way back to Maison McAleese I saw more carparks full of their four-wheel drives outside restaurants. Perhaps the rancho roundies 'ave no kitchens.

Football is important to them, and they 'ave a new ground, no, two new football grounds. One is shaped like a bedpan, and rugby is played there, and they practise in order to try to beat the mighty French. The other one is Broke Park (?), where some football is played by yahoos, but more often it's used for entertaining queens and Bono, the good. They also play with a small ball, too small for kicking, so they hit it with an ash plant.

They have a very 'andsome Prime Minister whom they call Teashop. Endo is his name, but they never tell me end o' what. He's denying it's the end of the country. If I get this job, he's coaxing me to lend even more money to them so that they can do what they want to, like installing the flying garden they brought back from their ancient enemy. It is now in the city in the south of the island which they call Cark. It is the mortal enemy of the capital, although war has been kept at bay between them, by the judicious placement of Cark warrior Eddie in the capital as a peace-maker and money problem solver.

Endo is the supremo, and 'is co-conspirateur is Michael, le miserable, who they have told me has a face like a slapped 'orse, but he doesn't look at all like a jockey to me. The comedie is provided in government by a tall garcon called Leo, very 'andsome, but they call him mouthy for some reason. Maybe he eats like an 'orse. Then there is Richard, so aristocratic that he doesn't reply to communications from the bourgeoisie. I believe that he only reads and answers letters written on embossed writing paper sealed with a family crest.

The women here are all blonde now. This is a biological change from dark hair in the old twentieth century at the fin de siècle. It has been caused I've been told by the wine drunk on their obligatory Spanish holidays. I have been told that as part of their baccalaureate, they have to go in groups to the Mediterranean coast and then do a driving test. Entry into adult life, or to planes to Australia, is always preceded by these rituals.

The people are very sad because they feel poorer than they used to feel. They express this sadness bravely by talking to their padre, Joe Duffy, on the radio. He consoles them between loud advertisements for 'olidays, cars and private mortgage facilities. 'e does this so well that there is a lot of laughter here, and you find yourself laughing too. My friend, la belle Elizabeth from the larger island, who never laughs at work, laughed all through her visit here.

All in all this is a funny melange of a country, tiny though it is. If we, les grands francais, were less perfect and more like these islanders we'd be the laughing stock of Europe as well, but we'd be laughing a lot more, as they do.