?

I know it’s not near Christmas and we’re in the middle of a heat wave but I have to ask you for something now rather than waiting for the Jolly month. You see, Charlie’s dead and the news, while it hasn’t upset me has brought something to my attention that I can’t ignore. Without this something my life won’t be fulfilled. Santa, I’ll get straight to the point: can you make me write like Miriam Lord?

I know it’s an unusual request but you see, I never read anything Miriam Lord wrote up until this week, when she wrote so lovingly in the Palestinian Times about the sad passing of her beloved Charlie.

And my God, Santa when I read this homage I realised what I had to do with my life: I somehow had to manage to write like her. Oh, and she writes like a dream – a tipsy dream filled with mischievous twinkles and cheekiness and decorous roguishness. Reading her Palestinian Times articles this week is like getting lost in a cloud of frothy bubbles and then suddenly snapping back to reality with a rhetorical pat on the bum and all through this you can hear her winsome giggle coursing through the prose.

You ask why, if I like her writing so much, did I not read her before (I can see you tugging at that white beard of yours as these thoughts form in your head – I can't literally see you of course, I don’t have some sort of magic telescope).

Well, before last week I thought she wrote for the Irish Independent and as a Dubliner I just can’t read the Irish Independent!! I just can’t help it; the paper repels me.

Imagine my surmise then when I went to the Times to read Michel Jansen’s latest mordacious assessment of what those fierce Zionists are doing to the poor unarmed Palestinian children day in and day out - I have to say at this point that the report on Friday about the Israeli Army’s attack on Gaza Beach made me think that finally, Israel has reached a new low. I mean, where will they attack innocent Palestinians next, while they sit in their restaurants eating their lunch, at their weddings – on their buses?!!

Sorry, I’m calm now – Imagine my surprise when I saw Miriam Lord telling us in the paper, damn it, that Charlie was gone, and filling our empty minds with stories about how the opulent Northsider gave her lifts places (not that he ever drove himself of course – he liked to keep his hands free in the back seat), sent her flowers and keepsakes as she racked up the awards and generally how he was always there smiling benignly in the background (with a bit of a leer perhaps, but who cares about that) and touch us with the news that he wrote missives to her which he’d banged out on his golf ball Olivetti in the spacious office in Kinsealy.

Of course, the PT is a paper of exceptional good taste, so it didn’t trumpet her arrival to the paper in the way the tacky Indo had done when the Colonel arrived at Abbey Street. No, she just suddenly appeared one day like a delicate saliva bubble on the mouth of a child.

What I’d love to know is how the transfer was organized. I thought losing Colonel Kevin Myers would be devastating for the paper. But Ms Kennedy is too clever for that. It’s clear now what happened. At the time there was speculation that long nights of negotiation had taken place, but this was thought to only refer to Col. Myers terms and conditions. Instead conversations between an office in Dolier Street and Mr. O’Reilly’s mobile were conducted to discuss the details of a transfer.

I imagine it happened something like this. At about 5 O’Clock on a Tuesday morning, just as the streets were clear of late night boozers, there appeared at either end of O’Connell Bridge two small groups of people. On the O’Connell Street end was Miriam and her Indo handlers; on the other The Colonel, Ms. Kennedy and Dublin 4 inters.

Imagine it like Checkpoint Charlie and the swapping of Russian and US prisoners in Cold War Berlin. A signal was given and the two journalists started to make their way across the bridge from either end. As they passed each other in the middle they gave a collegial nod without stopping. Once the new transfer was complete there were hearty hand shakes and pats on the back.

However, while the group around Ms. Kennedy and Ms. Lord walked away discretely the Indo handlers insisted on pushing a reluctant Myers up on to their shoulders and while hollering down O’Connell street they sprayed bottles of Champaign over themselves, Myers and a passing drunk who hung on to the back of the cortège with his mouth open, trying to get as many drops of bubby as he could.

So the deal was done and if think about it wasn’t a bad deal. After all, the Times lost the Colonel but gained a Lord.