My evening with the freckled folk

I don't know about you but personally, I am very tolerant of the less advantaged members of society. I'm talking about culchies, man. Oh sure, I will mock, deride and smack them about a bit but in reality I have a lot of time for the country folk. Which is why, when I was invited to come back to my good friend Dells house for a bit of a session, I was all up for it. Dell and I go back a long way: Essentially he hates my guts but we both pretend we don't know this. The exact wording of my invite was 'Hey, Lets go to Dell's and trash the joint'. How could I refuse?

Dell's home is a simple cottage on the outskirts of Tramore, built of pleasant homely materials like turf and old copies of Ireland's Eye. When we got there last night I clipped into his kitchen with some trepidation: would the boggers notice my urban sophistication and out me as the townie I was? I need not have worried. One look at my nervous yet lovely visage and they were pouring me out a whiskey from a large bottle of Teachers and pulling an upended bucket up to the open fireplace for me to seat my shapely bottom. Dell's dog snoozed contentedly at my feet. They must have run out of rough tobacco to stuff in their pipes though, for they fell upon my twenty Marlboro like dogs on a rabbit and I was instantly their best friend.

'Aaargh lassie, you're no' too bad', drawled Jim in his adorable country lilt. Jim is brother to the famous Noreen, by the way, which you will know if you are keeping up with the lineage of Tramore's finest. Bah. The boggers get all the good ones.

After we got the traditional party protocol out of the way (running round the house whooping, breaking glasses, jumping on all the couples shagging in the bedrooms and having a messy condiment fight with the contents of Dell's fridge), we proceeded to drink to the end of the bottle and the charming country folk sang me songs in their primitive way.

'Hey, fuckers, do ye know any songs that don't mention the IRA, wheat fields burnt by the English, potato blight, brave Irish rebels or the Black and Tans? Eh?' I piped up after a while. Me, I like to shake things up sometimes. The countrysiders regarded me blankly for a bit so I was forced to stand up on Dell's kitchen counter and belt out Born in the USA. As you do. All for naught, I'm afraid. The country folk just nodded and chewed their gums and launched in on a load of songs about poor Irish folk who had emigrated to Amerikay. As dawn's pale fingers fumbled clumsily about outside, seven of us passed around my last cigarette and the boys tried to persuade Marie F to take her clothes off.

Nobody asked me to take my top off. Damn culchies don't know a sure thing when they see it.