What is a bonzery?

Happy New Year.  Fr. Megson extends a shower of greetings to all you shower out there and in Australia.

Hope you all had a good Christmas.  People keep asking me if I did and I always say: "Oh yes, it was a very spiritual experience in a very real sense"...but the truth is I can't remember a fcekin thing about it.  I suppose I must have done but it’s all a bit vague.  I gather that I wasn’t the flavour of the month in every parishioner's household over the festive period and could I just say sorry if you happen to have been one of those people in the queue in the Co-op on Xmas Eve. I was well out of order hurling obscenities and tins of baked beans at you just because the queue was moving so slowly and I now fully accept that your need to buy milk and groceries for your families was just as valid as my need to procure  more cider. I can  assure you that this will never happen again as I have since learned that DISCOUNT BOOZE (would that all our retail outlets were so poetically named!) is far cheaper and they don't bother stocking poxy loss leaders like milk and bread.

Let me see now if I can retrace my movements.  I remember going into town for the local priests Diocesan meeting and Xmas booze-up in Vespers lap-dancing club on the 16th of December and not getting home again until the 21st. Apparently the craic was good and I eventually fell asleep under the Christmas tree in Albert Square.  I must have stayed there for two or three days and I remember waking up feeling a bit under the weather with a lot of bruises and contusions.  You know how it is when you fall asleep under a Christmas tree......people can't resist picking you up and shaking and poking you to see if there's anything nice inside......its a very inconsiderate thing to do to a fellow Christian and I dare say that the inquisitive hoors soon found out to their cost that there was nothing very nice inside me.......serves them right and I hope they got some nice new shiny shoes for Christmas!

Sorry about missing the midnight mass. I've had it in my diary since last January and I fully intended to go.  But you know how it is on a Christmas Eve morning....you're stood there in your longjohns listening to the BeeGees and  ironing your cassock when a couple of old lags from the Seminary turn up  celebrating the anniversary of their defrocking and getting parole.  You go out for a couple and before you know it, you've drunk your own body weight in cider and poteen and hey presto, in less time than it takes to say "you're a fcekin gobshite  ex-Fr  Keane, take that back what you said about me and that donkey  or I'll kick your arse all the way back to feckin Sunderland, ye hoor ye", you have lost the power to twiddle your toes let alone genuflect....Sorry anyway.

Hope you didn't miss me too much.  Can I just say a big thank you to all the altar boys for improvising so valiantly at short notice and to the many members of the congregation who shouted out helpful instructions at key moments throughout the service.  Marvellous.  Sure isn't that what the spirit of Christmas is all about?  The baby Jesus would have been fierce proud of the lot of ye.  And  isn't it an awful shame that the Channel 4 cameras didn't turn up.  I'm sure there would be a lot of mileage in a new light entertainment series called WHOSE MASS IS IT ANYWAY.

For some reason I had a bit of a headache on Christmas morning and I felt a bit lonely and depressed.  It's always a sad morning for priests.  Strictly speaking, we aren't supposed to keep children in the house overnight so we never get the chance to dress up in a beard and red cloak nor watch their little eyes light up as they open their prezzies.  I think that's the bit that priests miss the most.  I do of course get to dress up in various guises during the rest of the year - my Marlene Dietrich ensemble is to die for -  but it never quite has the same magic.

Did any of you get any decent presents this year?  I didn't.  Just the usual auld shower of socks, bottles of holy eau de Cologne from Knock and Lourdes - talk about coals to Newcastle - and half gallon bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream. Read my lips, all you female parishioners of a certain age out there, real priests don't drink Bailey's fcekin Irish Cream.

I did get a big box from the Bishop but my wildest hopes were cruelly dashed when I tore it open and found A COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE ONE HOLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH IN 6 USER FRIENDLY INTERACTIVE  SELF - LEARNING  MODULES.  I got on the blower to him prontissime but he told me to stop swearing and read the fcekin thing before the New Year or I would be out.  Looks like times are hard in the Vatican and they are making all of us reapply for our own jobs.

So I slammed the phone down and got in touch with our Union rep. Fr. Vivaldi aka The Red Priest.  He said not to worry because they had negotiated a very decent redundancy package for people like myself who had no fcekin chance of being given a job in the new shake-up.  Apparently we are to be offered an annual pension not exceeding one and two-turd times the total of our best collection plate based on the previous fiscal year.

"Pardon my Latin, Fr. Vivaldi", I said, "but that's a right load of bollox. There's  no way I could eke out the next 20 years on a selection of zlotys, old Irish threepenny bits, mutilated coppers and buttons and washers of various sizes.  And what about my wee house and housekeeper?"

"You'll lose the house", he replied, "but you can do whatever you want with your housekeeper".