All right people – you can go home again.

Saint Paddy isn’t a saint after all.

It transpires that this is just an ordinary day.  The festivities have been cancelled.

The whole thing was getting out of hand anyway.

On March 17^th all Americans become more Irish than the Irish themselves. And the real Irish go out and watch American marching bands in every backwater in Ireland.. It is getting confusing.

I remember the good old days when we used to sit for hours waiting for a pipe-band to march past. That would be followed by a tractor pulling a trailer with someone all dressed up sitting on it. The bits of shamrock would blow past in the gutter like tumbleweed, and we’d all freeze to death. But it was worth it.

Now it’s crazy. We have to have the ubiquitous marching bands and cheerleaders with characters floating around like refugees from a New Orleans Festival [maybe they are New Orleans refugees?]. The parade is so long now that the front end has reached the tail end before the tail end has even started. So it forms a vicious circle and goes on forever.

And just when the frostbite is nicely settling in, they start the fireworks. Some head off to the pubs where they traditionally get out of their heads and maybe start warfare in the streets, or just collapse in a coma.  The rest stay to watch the fireworks until rigor mortis sets in.

Oh how the pubs must love today! The one day of the year they are guaranteed to run out of stock. Then the hospitals fill up with the injured and the drunk. Oh joy!

Everyone is going around wishing each other “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day”. Why pick today to wish happiness? Do they hope you’ll die of Galloping Knob Rot the rest of the year?

Aw f*ckit! I’m off to the pub….