Collect your winnings
Posted in Blog by Twenty Major on July 23rd, 2007
“Jaysus”, said Dirty Dave, “I was just over in Spain at the weekend, seeing my lovechild Filthy Felipe, and it’s fucking roasting there. Why can’t we get that weather here?”
“That”, said Jimmy, “is the fault of Albert Flynn”.
“What? Old Albert from round the corner whose son has the giant eye and,” he whispered, “the gift.”
“Yeah, if you call foaming at the mouth a gift. Didn’t you ever hear? Albert won Spain in a game of poker with King Juan Carlos.”
“Get out of here.”
“Honest to God. He was in Barcelona for a weekend. Meant to go with his brother but something happened. He died. Something like that. Albert went anyway. Stayed in a nice hotel off Plaza Catalunya but found himself down in the Raval every night.”
“What’s the Raval?”
“It’s a place where after dark mad things happen. Some of them good. Some of them bad. All of them unforgettable. Albert found a bar which sold him Absinthe and he grew to liking it. He claims to have learned Spanish in a day. Held court. Stories. Jokes. Bravado.”
“I see.”
“So, turns out this bar is where King Juan Carlos comes when he’s in town. He rides a black motorcycle from Madrid to go out on the town in Barcelona. He’s in no danger of being found out because l’omerta of Barcelona is too important. Everyone’s too cool to care what anyone else is doing. He’s sitting at a table listening to the Irish man go on and on about how great his country is and he’s getting mad. So he challenges him to a game of cards. Each man put his country on the line, the King so incensed he completely forgets this is just a mad Irishman and nobody with any power to give him over his winnings.”
“That sounds like a mad place.”
“It is that. Anyway, they play 5 card stud. King Juan Carlos has a full house, 3 queens and two kings. He’s confident. He’s bubblier than a cheap Catalan cava. Starts giving it the big ‘Yo soy’. Albert’s just quiet. Lays his cards out. Four aces, one king. The elusive whatever it’s called. So the king, being a man of honour, just tells him the country is his. His people can come and take what land they desire and if Ireland was to be used solely for the production of potatos and the occasional writer then his people would move en masse to oversee such production.”
“So we could all be sunning ourselves on our roof terraces while the Spanish toil at our every whim instead of sending their children over here to totally overload the public transport system?”
“Precisely. Albert, being a gentleman, wouldn’t accept. Too many lives facing upheaval he said. He had no right to interfere like that. The implications of acceptance were too great for one man to consider let alone bring about. Told King Juan Carlos that an Absinthe cocktail of some kind, and a spare room at one of his castles from time to time, would suffice and King Juan Carlos gladly accepted, fulfilling his part of the deal, before shooting out into the night down the coast and on the motorway towards Castelldefels.”
“He won that country fair and square, Jimmy.”
“That he did, Dave. Albert’s just a silly cunt, is all.”
That Juan Carlos, when will he ever learn?
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:39 am
I think it was actually Antonio Badnderas taking the piss…or maybe he’s the love child, - he does have kind of a gomey look about him
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:17 am
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I think I know the bar in question Twenty. It wouldn’t happen to be named after a French city by any chance? It would make perfect sense that a King would drink there seeing as all of the barmen are queens. I once had an aspiring painter for a flatmate who went to that bar just to clean his brushes in the absinthe then came home and drank his stock of turpentine. Said it was safer.
An with his reputation, it’s pretty obvious where Juan Carlos was heading to in Castelldelfels.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:39 am
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“…instead of sending their children over here to totally overload the public transport system?”
HAHAHAHAHAHA it’s funny ‘cos it’s true
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
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The more Spanish chicks around the better. That’s my comment for the day.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
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At least Franco would have had the good sense to cheat.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
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Jesus, he could’ve asked for the Guell Palace or the Sagrada Familia at least!
I mean even if he’d just asked for the keys of the Museum of Erotica he’d have had something to live on.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
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Total nonsense. Having spent the weekend in Spain seeing my own nipper, MiniSkinner, I can confirm it chucked rain there just like it did here.
Dave’s a spoofer.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:14 pm
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Come on! The Irish would be lost without their nice soft days, the rain, fog, mist and wet weather. In Ireland you look up and get your face washed: in Spain you look up and get skin cancer. All of that sunshine would drive youse nuts or bore youse to death in a week.
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:16 pm
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Donde está mi castillo tú idiota
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
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Twenty, its Joe here. I have not had the chance to have a go at you about your comments (because i was getting de-loused and my head shaved) but i just bribed the screw for a go on his laptop, i wont say with what, so hear me out! Despite what you i think i may or may not have do it, however I was tried on circumstancial evidence. I was-excuse catchphase-tried-by-media. In some other european countries i mite would not have been jailed. Just like cathrine neven i was convicted on similar circumstancial shite, like the guy in donegal(not frank or his da) but some other hoor i cant think of now, who was jailed by the DPP also without evidence- but for political reasons. The point is not wheather i’m guilty but wheateh i got a fair trial. How the fuck could the jury not have concluded before the case even began. We’re a small island remember that-very fucking small for me now! With no rite to silence and 7 detention on whim of gardaí, the rite of the individual and the system for due process is deminishing every day. PS. If ya have any spare smokes send them to J. O’Reilly, wing10, cell 9 Portloise.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:34 pm
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Speaking of winnings it transpires I’d 4 numbers (€50) in the Lotty on Satday. There were about 7,500 of us. I wonder how many were watching the draw and had heart attacks as the four numbers were read out?
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:42 pm
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I’m just back from Barcelona, gutted i’d to return to this shithole. That said, i failed to meet a spanish king. I did however encounter a gent with no legs in a wheelchair, 3 am in the morning, in the corner. Concerned for yer mans well being i looked over, i didn’t go physically help him, he’d have probably stolen my wallet. He looked up, it was this point i noticed he had his cock in his hands and he’d begun wolf whistling at me. God i miss the Raval!
July 24th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
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