Black and White Issues

News comes to me from the outside World that the issue of colour has raised its traditionally not very photogenic head again. If you want a sensible discussion of the matter go here, and my mate Alan will sort you out. Otherwise, stay where you are for the usual unusual.

The source of the news from beyond the very well-appointed walls of the hacienda was the usual suspect, ie Part-Time Wife. I have no idea where she picks up these titbits of information about current affairs as, generally, any time she makes a bid for freedom from her domestic slavery, I go with her. This is not because I am a megalomaniac, control-freak kinda guy – though I am – but because of her admirable, consistent refusal to drive the car I bought her with my money, and which mostly sits at the side of the house, its bright red hue providing counterpoint to the rainbow of drying garments on the washing line in front of it. To give her her Jew [OK, you have dropped enough trigger words now to let us knwo you are taking about race, and stuff – Ed.], she will occasionally take the jalopy out for a spin to the corner shop all by herself. Or, rather, she used to before it was abolished summarily in a local scandal. The shop, that is; the corner is still there, and is still named ater the family of Sir Anthony McCoy, MBE, WAD.

Anyway, in one of her brief brakes (sorry about the typo – still thinking about that damn stationary car) [why don’t you correct the typo? – Ed.] (and put you out of a job?) from staring at her phone (probably trying to work out how it works, or how to send photos as attachments – again!) or breaking her laptop, yer woman, magnanimously, deigned to inform me of some sort of story from over The Pond concerning policemen displaying brutality. “Dog Bites Man” came to mind from my internal sub-editor as a succinct headline summary of the newsworthiness of this piece of news. By the way, if you do not (yourself) possess an internal sub-editor, I recommend heartily that you employ one straight away: mine is a source of excellent banter, a thing of beauty and, as such, a joy forever. But no, apparently; this is a big deal and had led, whether by accident or design, to a lot of people cocking a snoop at the lockdown laws and hanging out together in groups of more than six. This is a very serious matter, and requires some comment from me. If we let these eejits away with their mass demonstrations about a failed arrest in a foreign country that has nothing to do with them really, it will only start giving our employers the idea that it is maybe time to call us back to barracks and make us work in the office again. As I have explained previously in this very blog (look it up, Darzán, and provide a link by mid-morning break or I will curtail your grazing rights for the day), this is something up with which I will not put up with. There is about as much chance of my resuming work on a Mon-Fri, 9-5, encased in an office pattern as there is of Antrim winning the 2020 All-Ireland Football title. Or maybe less, who knows?

But it’s the rest of youse I am concerbed about. Well, not really concerned as I do not even know who most of youse are, but you know what I mean. If hordes of what I suppose I must describe as people are gonna turn up in droves at The Shitty Hall at the drop of a hat, or a knee, then it is only a small step from that to our employers getting the idea they can re-introduce workplace slavery and force us to appear habeas corpus under their beady eyes again. And that would not do at all as we are getting on quite nicely as we are, thank you very much. There are other ways to prove one is not a racist, ways that do not include breaking lockdown provisions that are to our advantage. Yer man who own this site, for example, wrote and published a triad on the very subject. Do you wanna hear it? Actually, it covers sexism and colonialism too, which is some trick for a three-line triad. Here we go:

Trí pheaca an tsinsir agam:

bheith den chine gheal;

bheith den domhan thiar;

bheith i m’fhear.

ad delectationem stultorum (Coiscéim, 2012)

Fairy Nuff? Nuff said?

As regards the whole colour issue, it is for me, of course, a linguistic question. Do you see yer man up there in the pic, the lead singer of Counting Crows, Mr Jones or whatever you call him?

Well, because of pics like that and the whole dreadlocks thing, I have always though of Adam as being black, despite Female Teenager pointing out to me any time I mention it that he is not, in fact, black. He is a person of colour, but so are we all, and I have never met a person in my life who was white. When Female Teenage was Female Toddler, she said to me one time on one of our outings to Botanic Gardens that she wanted to go back over to talk to “that brown woman” again. The woman in question was Asian, probably Chinese, but there was no way I was going to contradict a three-year-old and inform her that accepted wisdom deemed that such people were to be seen as yellow. Particularly not as the woman was obviously not yellow: Homer Simpson is yellow.

I do, however, contradict her when it comes to Adam and point out to her that, when I am speaking English but thinking in Irish, I am 99.8% correct when I describe Adam as black. Fear dubh in Irish means ‘a black-haired man’, just as fear rua means ‘a red-haired man’. An Fear Dubh with capitals, means the devil, but that is a different kettle of fish altogether. The term in Irish for the English term black man is fear gorm. As one of the shades of meaning of gorm is ‘blue'[Oh, very good – Ed.], I will let you figure that one out yourself.

Just remember, in Irish, the acronym FBG does not stand for any of these things. It means Fiúntas Beathaí Gorma, blue lives matter, and they do. But no more than brown, yellow, red or pink ones.