Lá Fhéile Pádraig

As far back as he could remember, which was quite far, the man in the hat spent Lá Fhéile Pádraig hooking coal and swilling tankards of Paddy’s Stout and Auger. His ma and da would go down to the local alehouse and hoist the brown to the patron saint of Ireland. That Friday his ma cooked whitefish and cabbage, as potatoes were a curse on the Irish, not a blessing. His da, who waxed and cured his mustache for the occasion, put on his best trousers, a white shirt and his paisley suspenders, saying as he did ‘blackguard cunts’ll get they’re comeuppance, believe you me.’ His da, figuring he had claim to Irish blood, said strange things on Saint Paddy’s Day, thinking, as he did, that he was born in the Bog-side, a clod of peat knuckled into the soft-spot of his wee Lutheran head. As his family was from Bogstown, farmhands with Irish, Scottish and French Canadian blood, not Guinness Erie, the man in the hat knew his da was spinney in the head, and not to be trusted on topics of lineage or geography.