Part Thirty-Four of the Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: Unexpected Visitors…

We start this time just over three hundred miles from Cumberside Island away to the south-west and close to the little town of Arracrowe in County Tipperary.

As we have seen, the notorious and widely-feared Kelly Gang had planned the most ornate funeral for one of their own that the Irish Republic has ever witnessed.

Unlike the Shrimpleton Town Gala, no expense had been spared by the Kellys in their determination to show the world in general – and three other notorious Irish gangster `firms’ in particular – that they and nobody else were the elite to be found right at the top of the Scumbaggery Charts in the Emerald Isle.

But – families being families – rivalries; resentments and old scores to settle had started to get in the way of the absolutely perfect send-off for Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly that the elders of the clan had hoped for.

We must remember that this funeral had come about because of his untimely and unexpected sudden departure from this Vale of Tears only a few days earlier in godless England – a demise that some of the Kelly Clan suspected an even more godless bunch of Sikhs called the Khalistan Warriors was responsible for…

On the main street of Arracrowe, leading cars of the funeral cortege of Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly’s final journey had already reached the church of Christ the King and gathered in a semi-circle facing the horse-drawn hearse which had taken pride of place right outside the entrance. Behind them, a long line of some of the most expensive and powerful motor cars on the planet were stuck in an endless traffic jam all the way back to the Golf club from which they had set out earlier. And I mean `endless’ – so many of the Kelly Gang and its hangers-on had turned up from all over the British Isles that – as the lead part of the cortege was stuck on the street outside the church – the tail of it hadn’t even left the club.

As a result, car horns were being angrily honked at several places between Christ the King and the Golf Club.

Why? I don’t really know but I have noticed that there seem to be those among us who are just itching to do this, regardless of the circumstances. We’ve all heard them, haven’t we? I believe that certain Conspiracy Theorists suggest that what we are listening to is actually alien life forms communicating with each other. They know what the honks mean even if we don’t. Personally, I doubt this very greatly. Others suggest that – just like young men who drive their souped-up cars on public roads like lunatics – the honking is a call for help. Just like the Boy Racers, they are advertising to the world in general the very sad fact that they wholly inadequate in every other regard and are not at all happy about this unfortunate fact.

What do you think?  I think it’s far more likely that honking is probably a notifiable disease – once one person succumbs to it, it seemingly spreads really quickly.

Whatever, in addition to the congestion and the car horns, outside the main entrance to Christ the King, feelings that had already been a little fraught between the two clergymen tasked to conduct today’s very solemn ceremony had come to an unfortunate conclusion.

Father Finbar O’Fooligan was lying even more senseless than usual flat on his face close to where Metropolitan Nikolas of the Russian Orthodox Church was standing in a huge pool of his own making close by him.

As the representatives of two separate religions publicly re-opened The Great Schism outside the entrance to Christ the King, Siobhán Aleksandovna Kelly was unaware of the latest developments out on the streets as the funeral of her dead brother was clearly not going as well as might have been hoped.

She was far more worried about what the members of the Kelly clan who had forced her to abandon her leading position in the service had told her. She had already been increasingly concerned about the growing cacophony of horns coming from the endless line of cars stretching down the Main Street as far as anyone could see.

Now, with two of her most loyal – and most intimidating – bodyguards by her side, she was going to see what all the fuss and the honking was about.

They turned towards the head of the queue: where stalled cars were stacked-up behind the hearse and funeral car which had driven off the Main Street to face the open doors of Christ the King.

Expensively-dressed people were milling about as they left their priceless vehicles and complained that they couldn’t go any further. They weren’t happy. They should be involved in Joe-Boy Kelly’s Last Rites and not been Made a Show Of out here in the cold. What was the point of coming to the funeral otherwise?

As tensions rose, Siobhán and her two large minders gradually moved closer towards the head of the blockage. This started with a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder: a wedge-shaped yellow monster of a sports car, some of whose spare parts alone cost more than entire other `normal’ vehicles do new.

Its driver had left the supercar and was loudly arguing with the occupant of the second vehicle in the queue: an even more expensive, low-slung piece of precision engineering that basically only Premiership footballers, rock stars and gangsters can afford.

The driver of the second car stepped from the cockpit and basically squared-up to the man on the pavement. As he did so, more car doors opened, disgorging their angry, sometimes stoned, drunk (or both) occupants onto the pavement.

Behind them, other cars emptied as well as their cargoes of fabulously wealthy criminals wanted to argue the toss about who had been snubbed and why. The entire situation was becoming steadily super-heated and ever-more fraught, noisier – and worth fighting about. With fists. Or knives. Or even guns – nobody was going to be Made A Show Of in the Kelly Gang!

So the mood in Joseph Aleksandrovitch’s funeral cortege – as cameras recorded it live from all angles – was growing increasingly ugly.

Siobhán knew she had to put a stop to this – and quickly.

But as she strode forwards with her enforcers to confront the two men who were seemingly about to come to blows right outside the entrance to the church, Siobhán became suddenly aware of the loud blaring of a klaxon coming in the other direction as they neared the head of the queue.

She looked towards the south and saw a dust cloud hanging over the road which led down the steep hillside towards where she was standing. It was getting rapidly closer and gathering shape and form as it did so. It seemed to be green. And huge. And increasingly noisy.

“Get out of your cars!” she yelled at the top of her voice; “Get out of your cars, now!”

What she had shouted was simply drowned-out by the cacophony of klaxon; massive wheels and a huge engine coming at speed in the other direction. But her instructions were unnecessary too: all the occupants of the leading vehicles had seen what she belatedly had and already done what she was urging them to.

They all stood, unbelieving, as Cormack McMullen’s huge John Deere made contact with the lead car in the procession. The wedge shape of the Lamborghini Huracán Spyder provided a perfect launching pad for the tractor and its cargo as it smashed its way up and over the fabulously expensive cars jammed nose-to-tail on Arracrowe’s Main Street. The uncontrolled train simply ploughed the Spyder into the ground as its forward momentum drove tractor, farmer, cattle truck and pigs an unbelievably long way down the road before the juggernaut finally ground to a halt in a shower of sparks and steam after perhaps fifty million Euros’ worth of high performance automobiles had finally stopped it in its tracks.

(Let’s give the dust time to settle and the echoes of steel; aluminium and carbon fibre bodies being crushed or otherwise wrecked fade away at this point. I feel that the time is long overdue to explain some basic Irish terms before we go any further

You will have guessed already that a `figary’ is a whim; a `Gombeen’ is an idiot; a `fizzog’ is a face and a `Pig Iron’ is some new–fangled contrivance of whatever sort that even a Gombeen on a figary knows won’t work.

You’re welcome.

But words we are about to encounter next probably need an explanation in advance if only to understand how insulting or hurtful they are meant to be as far as Irish people are concerned.

A `Jackeen’ is a term used by county folk in the Republic to deride city-dwellers (mostly Dubliners) who – in their eyes – try to identify too closely with the English and feel superior to everyone else as a result.

You can identify Jackeens by the way they talk (barely recognisable as being from the Emerald Isle to the rural population); the papers they read; the clothes they wear – even the food they eat (the Guardian Weekend Supplement being particularly guilty in this regard on all counts.)

So a Jackeen is anybody who identifies too closely with the British Union Jack flag.

But what is a `Culchie’?

It is basically an Irish version of `yokel’ and not meant as a compliment – and anyone who tells you otherwise (to use further Irish linguistic parlance) is a `feckin’ liar!’

I hope that’s made things a little clearer.)

An eerie silence fell across the scene of mayhem in Arracrowe as the tractor finally came to a halt and the engine was cut. But – as a huge man started to climb from the cab and descend into the squashed, smoking and very significant carnage he had just caused, that silence was broken as angry members of the Kelly Gang lined-up to face him.

Seemingly oblivious, Cormack McMullen picked his way carefully through the wreckage towards the back of his huge tractor, inspecting the considerable damage that had been done to his cattle trailer.

As he did so, a man in a classic gangster get-up – Rayban sun glasses; a dark suit with a slight pin-stripe in it and a trilby hat – appeared on the pavement and pulled a gun from his inside pocket. It was a silver Colt Classic Government Issue 9mm pistol, loaded with eight bullets. As he pointed this potentially lethal weapon at the big farmer, he expressed some thoughts which Cormack was not very happy to hear. Ignoring the gun, the uninvited guest at Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly’s funeral was quick to respond.

“Culchie? I’ll show you who’s a Culchie, yer Big Bollix!” he yelled; “But I’ll cut rashers off your arse first!”

So saying, he swept-up a rogue Swede which had been bounced out of the cattle trailer and threw it at the gangster with the gun. As we know, Cormack is a big man. He had also once been the Captain of the County’s Hurling team. He could still throw a Hurley ball the length of a pitch – accurately. A Swede is much bigger than one of those balls and a man standing just ten feet away is a target much easier to hit than a team-mate maybe forty yards away. And Cormack didn’t miss: the vegetable smashed into the hoodlum’s face with such force that it snapped his Raybans clean in half, broke his nose and fractured his right eye-socket in one sickening split second. It was as if he had been hit by a brick. He fell, senseless, to the ground, dropping the Colt as he did so. But his assailant had it snatched up almost before it hit the ground.

“Any more of you Gombeens want to make a show of yerselves?” he yelled, turning to face the other members of the Kelly Gang who had left their cars to see what the hell was going on. And in case there was any doubt, he fired three shots in the air over the heads of any Gombeen foolish enough to take him on.

As they scattered in all directions, he emptied the rest of the gun’s bullets into the leading car: one through the windscreen and four more through the side of it once he had located the fuel filler-cap. Then he threw the gun away. There was an immediate reaction from within the vehicle – the gangster’s Moll, already transfixed by terror after seeing her boyfriend attacked by a wild red-faced maniac of giant size armed with a dangerous root vegetable – screamed and leapt from the passenger seat of the Maserati as she was showered with shards of glass as the windscreen exploded into millions of pieces. A strong smell of high-octane petrol was detectable as a large pool of liquid started spreading rapidly beneath the ruptured tank.

“Hey, you – Jackeen!” he yelled, grabbing the flummoxed driver of the next car in line – a Bugatti – with one huge hand and yanking him from behind the driver’s seat with the ease with which he might have pulled-out a child or even a teddy bear:

“You look like the sort of sophisticated town-dweller who indulges in the Gentleman’s habit of cigar smoking! Am I right?” He shook the terrified man so hard that his Raybans fell–off.  “Oops!” continued Cormack, deliberately stepping on them, “Perhaps you’d like to give me a light?”

The man produced a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket, which Cormack ripped out of his shaking hands.

“Sorry!” he said, throwing the terrified gangster to the ground, “I’m forgetting me manners! There will be a Mass Card or something to honour the memory of the dear departed, I suppose!”

There was – and several appeared from handbags or suit pockets of people too terrified – or too slow – to retreat to safety out of range of this enormous lunatic. Cormack grabbed the nearest one and opened it.

“Ah – that’s nice!” he said. Then he looked up and down the street, which appeared as if it had just been hit by an air-raid. “Sure – it would have saved a lot of messing about if he had just been cremated, wouldn’t it?”

So saying, he lit the edge of the Mass Card, waited for the flame to catch and then dropped it onto the spreading pool of inflammable liquid beneath the Maserati which he had just shot-up. With a `Whumph!’ it ignited and started to burn really fiercely. Then he turned on his heel and started to walk up the street towards the church, only to find an expensively-dressed woman flanked by two big apes in Armani suits striding towards him. They stopped as they got up to him and the woman – who was clearly in charge – spoke:

“Do you know who I am?” demanded Siobhán Aleksandovna Kelly.

Cormack didn’t, but he wasn’t stuck for an answer:

“Yeah! I can see that you’ve got a face like a sow’s arse, ye Aul Bag, for a start!”

The farmer’s diplomatic skills clearly could clearly do with some working-on…

Siobhán knew how to deal with peasants like this one, though. She nodded soundlessly to the largest of her henchmen, Big Brendan.

“Oi tink you needs to learn a few basic manners, you big Poltroon!” said Big Brendan – who certainly lived up to his name. He moved back almost imperceptibly to put his weight on his right-hand side, preparing to deliver an upper-cut to the big farmer which would put most people into orbit. But he paused – as most people would – as Cormack raised one huge mitt – his left – in a placatory manner and said:

“Janey Mack! Talking about manners, you hairy chimpanzee’s knackers, aren’t you forgetting a few nice little words of your own?”

“Which would be?”

“You big Poltroon – if you don’t mind!”

“If you don’t mind?” repeated Big Brendan sarcastically. Which was all the invitation Cormack required. He hit the glorified night-club bouncer with his sledge-hammer of a right fist smack-bang in the side of the head. Big Brendan didn’t have many lights on at the best of times but now, they were all extinguished in an instant. Leaving Siobhán unprotected except by her smaller henchman Mickey – and the revolver she had in her handbag. What might happen next could be really unpleasant for somebody…

But someone’s bacon was literally saved – by bacon itself, believe it or not.

Ever since Cormack’s cattle trailer had come to a standstill behind his John Deere, the panicked Hogs inside it had been trying to get out. These creatures weighed between 500 and 700 pounds each: a combined total of well over a ton. And a fully-grown male pig can move at up to twelve miles an hour – and they can accelerate like Olympic sprinters.

There was a sudden ear-splitting explosion from close by as the fuel tank of the car Cormack had set ablaze suddenly exploded, spreading burning petrol far and wide and starting a number of other fires which would quickly spread in all directions.

In an instant, the broken back ramp which acted as the door to the cattle truck finally gave way to the constant butting of enraged Boars trapped beyond it. The sudden loud noise had utterly startled them and increased the ferocity of their joint escape attempt literally to breaking point. And four fully-grown Hogs blasted out of the back of it faster than the average Olympic sprinter – and – squealing louder than the siren of your average Fire Engine (for which there was an increasingly urgent need) – kept on running. They swept past Cormack and Siobhán but left Mickey on his back, his right leg actually broken and folded-up under his large bulk as just one pig barged straight through him and headed in the most obvious direction open to them. This was the church and they raced in through the side door and – faced by a confusion of lit candles, flowers and Mass Cards neatly laid out on the benches in the nave, swerved sharp left and charged up the aisle towards the sunshine which was pouring through the open main doors.

Let’s try to look at this from the panic-stricken Hogs’ point of view.

What’s the collective noun for lots of pigs? A Herd? A Flock? A Gammon? No – there are actually several: a Drove; a Sounder; a Drift or even just a Team of pigs. I don’t think any of them are really suitable so I’m going to invent one of my own which I think is much more descriptive: a Squadron.

This Squadron formed-up behind its leader – the biggest and fastest Hog– as they charged through the church towards daylight and freedom. Two were acting as the leading pig’s wing-men as they raced side-by-side just behind him. And the fourth pig was bringing up the rear. All four of them suddenly burst – as if from low clouds on a dive-bombing run – into the open. The Squadron Leader summed up the situation in an instant. Enemy bandit in a dress, standing in a huge pool of what might just be water at nine o’clock. Bandit horses at three o’clock. Other enemy reinforcements – mostly old women – in reserve. Some wheeled thing with glass sides directly ahead. Tally Hog, chaps!

The huge leading swine took the line of least resistance without even pausing: the hearse. His wing-men did the same, as did Tail End Charlie – sorry – Porkie. Almost as if they had been choreographed, they leapt into the air and virtually literally flew onwards. In a welter of exploding glass and pulverised flowers, the transparent sides of the hearse disintegrated as the sound of breaking panes and splintering wood echoed and re-echoed off the church walls and those of the car-park. In a second – just like a real-life air-raid; it was over. The squadron of pigs had leapt over a low wall and disappeared into the grassy green distance which stretched-out as far as the eye could see.

The sounds of destruction and its echoes gradually died away. Father Finbar O’Fooligan – oblivious to all that had just happened – lay senseless on the ground. The Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of New York City stood in a pool of his own making with his mouth open, rendered uncharacteristically completely speechless by what he had just witnessed as he simply gawped uncomprehendingly at the wreckage in front of him.

Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly’s Nearest and Dearest (oh – and ancient-est) shared the general feeling of complete shock. Until Auntie Niamh started to scream…

The wreckage the Hogs had caused to the hearse had not only smashed the glass in the sides of it and destroyed all the carefully-laid flowers and floral tributes; it had also damaged the casket which was supposed to be Joe-Boy Kelly’s final resting place. As Tail End Porkie disappeared in a billow of dust as it leapt the car park wall, Joe’s coffin had been turned on its side and was balancing precariously on the broken edge of the hearse.

Now although Metropolitan Nikolas had followed the instructions as to how to conduct the perfect Orthodox funeral to the letter of the law, this had not included supplying the Dear Departed – or his casket – with a seat belt. Doing so would seem a bit pointless in the circumstances, wouldn’t it?

So imagine his horror as the body purporting to be that of Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly very slowly detached itself from the coffin it was lying in and fell to the ground. There, it rolled over at least once until the corpse finally settled on its back. Leaving the shock of red hair which had been so carefully attached to the skull of Joe-Boy’s Doppelganger in its wake.

The sudden unexpected – and violent – movement, furthermore, had caused the body to react in another very natural but totally unexpected way.

Gases which had been trapped in once-frozen intestines but had been slowly brewing up a storm ever since were suddenly released – and Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly let go of the largest fart of his life. Or death, to be pedantic (as if this mattered given that this body actually belonged to some unfortunate victim of Russian Mafia feuds thousands of miles away in the United States of American in any case).

Auntie Niamh had screamed when the ginger wig detached itself from the body on the ground:

“That’s not the little gobshoite Joe-Boy!” she yelled.

For despite her poor eyesight, the stark and shocking fact that this was not going to be the funeral of Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly but of someone else altogether was obvious to anybody witnessing this utterly bizarre scene.

And when this interloper then had the temerity to Let Off at perhaps the most solemn moment of his life (that’s not right, is it?) afterlife (is that any better?) OK, then: own funeral, Auntie Gráinne apparently fainted.

At the same moment, Father Finbar O’Fooligan came round to return to whatever senses he had ever possessed, summed-up the scene of devastation all around him and concluded that he had died and gone straight to Hell. By instinct, he crawled over towards the collapsed retired nun and took her pulse. There wasn’t one.

“So you’re down here too are ye; Sister Gráinne?” he mumbled. “What does dat say about de state of de clergy in poor old Oireland dese days?” but was startled when the octogenarian Great Aunt Nuala said to him:

“So Gráinne’s a goner as well then Finbar! Ah well. Any chance on one of dem Bog-Off things: youse knows: two funerals for the price of one?”

Oh dear. Things were not going at all well in sleepy little Arracrowe as Siobhán’s hopes for a funeral never to be forgotten was achieving that significant accolade for all the wrong reasons.

But at least Siobhán wasn’t been physically threatened by anyone, however badly things had gone astray.

Not too far away to the east on a small island in the Irish Sea, that could not be said for another female star of this yarn. Last time we met her, Lady Lynne Shrimpleton was facing a Fate Worse Than Death at the Black Pool, home of Shrimpleton Town Football Club.

Would she be more successful than Siobhán Kelly in heading this off at the pass?

Look out for the next episode of the Sensational Shrimpleton Saga to find out…