Act Two Still
Programme note: The funny bits here provided by Ms Cat. (Soprano)

Come dear friends, part the fog if we may and take for our vantage, the bough of this handy chestnut. Cling tight and we might also feel, through the warm gnarled bark, the majesty of His Design. And keep such close, a wholesome anchor for us, as we witness grim Humanity.

He has the look of the salt-caked mariner, rolling home from a twelve-month round the Horn to Valparaiso (and damn yer eyes in the Dago lingo!), Right down to his boots and his kitbag duffel. Yet we’d be wrong, for earlier this day he arrived by air, stopping here to change his plane. With fogbound hours to kill, he took the chance, to see the Fair City, but now quite lost, he wanders drunk, his dunnage he cares not where. From that tartan duffle low slung over, he pulls another can, drains it, then with a flick, he kicks it toward the van. Old Scotia’s proud ambassador!

'Oh Danny Boy, the pipes-hic-the pipes are callin', from glen to glen, an' down the mountain side...'

Binty, every drunk, every acting, weaved a weavy weave towards the grinning Mally. He salutes a bush, he winks dutifully at a lampost, Mally watches and feels his dander rise.
What's this? The drunken Binty stops, and fumbles for his crotch. A tilt, a groan, is it...Mally can hardly believe his eyes. Is-is he pissing against Dublin's finest bin?
Baile atha Cliath?
Mally bristles, his jaw muscles jump, he hears the bodhran and the tin whistle in his head. Against the trad music, he also hears the snip snippity snip of his plastic handcuffs.
A surge of power awaiting his deft fingers.
His moblie, cast aside, still bleats faintly in the night...

'Here here, listen you gobshite are you takin' the piss or wha'? Look, if you want t'come 'round it's twenty for a hand-'

Mally reaches down, his thumb hits end, his eyes befixed on Binty's steaming piss. ~He is shaking it off, zipping up. His alluring slip-slod trippity trop waddle commences right this way.
There is a god, Mally thought weakly, and thy name is fuckin cider!
He feels once for his illegal and highly frowned upon sap. It is oiled up and ready to go.
He grapples with the handle and steps out into the cool night air...


Sergeant O’Shea, (master of every rabbit punch, arm twist, kidney poke in the book) has met his match in a slip of a thing that stepped out a toothpaste commercial.

“Where’s oul’ Dan? It’s him that usually sees me.”

Oul’ Dan, an idler from our hero’s betting shop, has, at Barney’s polite but insistent suggestion, taken himself off to his local for the night, with a twenty in his top pocket “to get him started“.

“He had to leave. I’m his locum.”
“His locum? He never mentioned family to me, maybe I should wait till he’s back.”
“Don’t be silly now, sure I know what I’m doin’, come through to the treatment room, it’s the neck is it?”
CRACK.
“My Cot but it is.”

And with soft hands upon his shoulders she steers him through the house, contriving on the way to give the villain’s neck a tweek.
CRACK

“Oh fuck!”
“Are you all right there? Not long now. Get your uniform off and lie on the table.”
“Trousers too? It’s the neck! me neck, I keep telling yi’”
”All of it. I’ve got to…to manipulate the spine…em, sure but you know what they say, the neck bone’s connected to the backbone…
“Jeez, right then, here have them, take it all, feck!”

Onto the table he struggles, what with his gout and his twisted neck and all, but he’s still a man…

“No Sergeant, face down.”

As quick as it’s off, the Garda suit is passed unseen to the waiting Fatmammycat.



“Hello there friend, havin’ a good night eh? long ways from home, here let me assist, “serve and protect” that’s our motto!”
“Are YOU a polis, son?”
“Sorta, come back to the van, I’ll run yi’ to town.” smirks our serpent, overlooked by Patrick in the Holy Days. For Binty, a man lost in the fog, the offer of a warm van back to town, is a harbour light unlooked for. In his best Rastafarian, kept for just such moments, he shouts in joy.

“Rock on, me Bredren!”

The cosh is stopped sudden on the backswing.

“Wha’? Di’ you say Brethren? A Brother? You?”

Now Binty knows naught of square and divider, he’s kept his pockets clean, in simple friendship he responds:
“Eh? Yeah man, put it there…brother”, his honest open hand outstretched.
Mally takes it, to be sure, Lets check the Scotchman’s secret Grip.
Through clumsy drunken mishap or Luck’s protection Binty’s handshake goes awry. Fuck The Hairy Goat! thinks Mally, (for such is the heathen talk they use)
A Grandmaster of the third degree! Wid you fucking believe it? And me a Vow new taken!

“Fucking cuntish bastard hoors of a cunty-cunty fuck!” Shouts Mally in his jig of rage.
“Eh, urr yi all right there Jimmy?”
“Yes Yes, get in the van, I’ll give you a lift. Feck!.”