A Good Sense Of Humour Blunts The Sharp Blades Of Reality: Shaving Ryan’s Privates

Roll back the clock to Josef Locke (and not before or after), in climes where shrines have names like Knock without provoking laughter. My father was an army man (and yet me to beget), all spit-and-polish, spick-and-span, and quite the martinet. Those soldier boys were short on poise in those benighted days: the Murphys, Martins and Molloys were raised in rustic ways. But Duty Sergeant Kevin Coy, vesuviously vocal, was out to drum-head or destroy each vermin-ridden yokel. His boots could pass for lacquered glass, his gloves would shame a surgeon: his dignitas at morning Mass outshone the Blessed Virgin. Imagine, then, when Cousin Ben (all NCOs were family) provided gen beyond all ken (with palms perspiring clammily): “They’re on a charge. I told them, Sarge. I threatened savage slaughters. Le nettoyage. A smell at large in Ballykelly Quarters.” They hunted high, they hunted low, they bled the radiators, more ebb and flow could offer no Projection of Mercator’s. Just how to quell that awful smell preoccupied them greatly: hard to dispel, suspicion fell on Houlihan, then Hateley. Catch as catch can, they caught their man (not Higgins, or O`Hara): who’s down the pan? None other than your man from Connemara. What Ryan knew was equal to a peat-bog sown with barley: he’d not a clue – “What? Put on new bejeezers, regularly?” His first long-johns remained the ones adorning regions nether: six months now gone, he still had on the same ones, altogether. “Wear other pairs? These stink – who cares?” What’s harder to believe is, unawares, his thighs’ black hairs had grown quite through the weave! “He’s now cashiered for being weird – why then, we’ll depilate him.” His locks were sheared, and then his beard, and pubis, seriatim. Thus Ryan, Sean, of Shirley born, his gonads wholly hairless, is there to warn, so sheerly shorn: a lesson to the careless. Whatever sins the Pope rescinds, or parish priests connive at, sloth never wins. Redress begins with Shaving Ryan’s Privates.