Funerals

 Was it not devious old Oliver J. Flanagan who said that you should walk up to your worst enemy and shake his hand.

But,Oliver J. Flanagan was a successful politician so what occasion of public sincerity was he referring to?

A funeral, obviously where your friends good and bad both,gather and votes are won.

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People who have been unemployed for long periods-that category embraces the disabled,idle or pensioners -often will not turn up at the funeral of someone who they know well. The reason is that they know they are not welcome (or are like all unemployed people argumentative and disagreeable individuals who are always picking fights) and are those troublesome people who take offence easily at mere irony. They are people "who would raise a row in hell".

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A doer of good works and kind deeds such as the activities organised by churches and religious laymen will be long remembered after his death regardless of whether it involved money.

That remembrance is the abiding message of the churches whether we go to them or not.

Communists, revolutionary socialists and other blackguards such as the Freemasons and anarchists are soon forgotten.

All a secular 'giver' wants to hear at his funeral is "A life well lived!"

Amen,to that,I say.

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Someone who laughs into your face or mocks and ridicules you openly is someone who holds you in absolute contempt.

Do not,for heaven's sake,fool yourself about that sort of person. He is an arrogant buffoon who will not be at your funeral when you die. He is like Mickie and Jim Mc Manus someone who will send you on a wild goose chase. If you try his patience in an insurgency, he will most certainly send you onto the guns because in Ireland,you will be well aware of his foul deeds.

Keep such a haveril and country bumpkin at arm's length and watch him get wound up in a knot of his own making. Give him no comfort or solace,much less warranty of interest in his grand designs and idle schemes for self-enrichment as he attempts "to pull a fast one".

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At funerals, people gather to discuss the affairs of the day while gathering gossip about the deceased for future circulation. They intend to declaim the person they secretly hated or ridicule the person who rebutted their amorous advances.

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"These days funerals are places you go to hire and fire. Deals are transacted and people taken on or let go.

" Never go to the funeral of someone who you did not know on speaking terms of at least casually unless they are a neighbour or relative. It's bad manners not to. If you suspect that they have been carrying stories about you or your family or are a Provo don't go near their funerals or you will get a bad name for yourself as a nosey parker or thief because things get stolen at funerals,too.

"Don't forget your real friends. A funeral is a good time to find out your real friends and who has your best interests at heart and who will put up the price of a funeral for yourself or a family member if the worst should come to the worst. That's why you should always join a trade union because that's why they were set up,to bury people not drinking parties around the Twelfth of July like goes on around Belfast and Shorts. The union buries people but they usually have to be forced to put up the money by your real friends. Your real friends are people who give you money and not for old books. When you join a trade union,you soon meet proper friends,real friends that is not old dochalls like the Lynchs and O Briens. That's their real name but they don't know it,the same as anybody who came out of an orphanage or children's home. A trade union is only for necessity,not luxury. I strongly advise you to join one soon before the Orange Order and Roy Kells take the skin off your back. He blames you for Jimmy Graham's death,not the Lynch and Murphy brigade who were the real culprits. A lawyer is no replacement for a trade union. That's something different. You wouldn't even your wit to an ol' dochall like Mick Mc Manus or Niall Corrigan who drew the dole all their lives and don't know how to conduct themselves properly in public and have ruined the youth of the country by putting them off joining the only organisation that can help any man that wants to work. Go up the street and you'll see the Provos coming out of pubs and bookies. Those people don't work for a living. They will be drawing the dole the longest day of their lives when they're not starting fights and arguments that it would take a dozen clergymen or a regiment of police to settle."