Pie Bald Paddy

Pie Bald Paddy they came to call him which was a real stroke of genius seeing as it was his name. He’s a traveller by trade having spent many a long year studying maps and atlases and globes. Eventually he graduated and was given a bus pass but soon he had acquired enough money to buy his own set of wheels. Well he bought an ould van and the wheels he stole. But it was an expected surprise to everyone when they heard who it was and I’m sure I suppose no more of a surprise to anyone more than those who were surprised the most. Pie Bald Paddy was an existential traveller vigilante, travelling from halting site to halting site fighting crimes such as horse thieving, inter family feuding, inter family fornication, rationalism and positivism. There wasn’t many who could best him at the slash hook or the pick axe handle. He was a familiar figure of that there’s little doubt both loved and loathed in equal measure. His bruised and battered van a frequent fixture at irregular intervals on the flat barren undulating countryside here in the city, and if it wasn’t for his regular visits to the halting site sure nobody would have seen him at all. I’d almost nearly never see him only when he’d call over on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to fix a saucepan or steal a gate or fix a gate and steal a saucepan or sometimes both and sometimes neither. Sometimes he wouldn’t come over at all and other times he’d be here all along. Sure you couldn’t be up to him he was an awful character and full of beans. Jaysus the smell out of him at times would kill a horse, at other times the horse wouldn’t notice it at all, but he could shite for Ireland, your man now, not the horse. I one time hear tell of a tale of a lad of the size of your man who ate a horrid feed of beans and they had to get the fire brigade out to get him down of a pile of shite that he let rip out of his hole. He had only intended to fart but the clutch slipped and before he knew it he couldn’t get stopped. The chief inspector with the fire brigade said that if it wasn’t for the saving grace of having some bad stitching in the seat of his pants he’d likely have backed up and most probably exploded and killed all in the place. Or maybe not all in the place but some, and likely most, or if not exploded he would most certainly have bloated and farted and most likely have killed the horse or at the very least he’d have creased his shirt and embarrassed the animal. Well he came round the corner like a whore on wheels grabbed me by the scruff of the ankles and demanded to know why I didn’t think human beings created the meaning of their own destinies. I have to admit at the time I was in a bit of a pickle and emitted a small noise of the very sort a dolphin makes when it’s been caught committing adultery. I figured there was little point in arguing and stated my case that although I may have stood accused of being a logical positivist I saw myself more as somewhere between an apathetic agnostic and an agnostic atheist. He dropped me, jumped into his van and fled. It was a close one.

Max pull over the gate before the fucker comes back ....