 |
The Resolutions Begin Here!
I promise to start smoking, put on weight, do no exercise, drink more, not learn Irish, talk to the peelers, not return calls, be the last to buy a round, start fights, be more sexist, forget birthdays and anniversaries, use charity bags as bin-liners, and do whatever else is considered bad for my body and soul.
That's it, I am out of my 2001 depression already! The more of those resolutions I break the better person I shall become and the less guilty I will feel!
Guilt is a powerful emotion, experienced even by English people, according to some anthropologists. I think we go through life feeling as if we've done something vaguely wrong, even though we don't always know what it is. Maybe the Bible's right, Adam and Eve did exist, were found guilty by God for eating their Granny Smith, were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and we've had to suffer original sin ever since. In which case I'll settle for a Diplock Court any day.
Perhaps, this sense of perpetual guilt can be traced to our conditioning through religion and culture and society's need for obedience. But whatever its source it's definitely there. And I've caught it big time.
And so I'd like to clear the decks and to apologise to everyone in advance and in retrospect for my appalling behaviour whenever, whatever and with whosoever, at my christening, at playschool, behind the bike-shed, in the Cooler, in various tents, on trains, boats and planes, on mountain tops, but never in the Europa, and, as a bet, in the bookies. It wasn't really me, but a powerful wee devil called Horace who has grown up with me and sits on my right shoulder most afternoons drinking and smoking and telling dirty jokes.
I would like to apologise for stealing Bazooka Joe chewing gum out of old John's shop, for not blessing myself going past the chapel, for missing Mass, for saying Jeepers Creepers a lot, for drinking the last of the milk, for the Johnny Long Legs Brendan Hunter and I dismembered (yes, Brendan, get it off your chest and be a man!), for not putting the toilet seat down, for the cat calls and wolf whistles I made and the accompanying use of inappropriate colourful language to do with small birds, for the banks that I robbed and the air that I breathed. For the women I lied to, the man I claimed to be. For the tyres I let down and the farts I disclaimed and the rumours I started. For the confessions I invented because the priest looked bored. For coveting neighbours' goods before their wives. For diluting drink. For once voting Gerry Fitt.
I would also like all my impure thoughts to be taken into consideration, after I just run through them. I am a bad man.
I would also like to publicly apologise to Lord Henry Mountcharles for eating and drinking him out of house, home and castle during last August's Slane concert when I claimed to be Moby's manager and tried to search his rooms. I would also like to apologise to Jimmy Nesbitt who at the 'Guardian's' party in London in July I kept calling Skippy. What could those waiters have been serving me?
I have to also plead guilty to many, many other less enjoyable offences. In fact, Lord, I just sinned because everybody else was doing it. Come to think of it, I didn't have such a great time most of the times. In fact, my offences are so slight that I feel a bit of a fraud, if not a Saint.
You know something, Lord, I think I've paid my debt to society. Here, you can have your apple back. In fact, not one, but a whole box of Granny Smith's!
Now, where's my wee Horace.
[ back ]
© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison