Monthly Archives: January 2013
Fears For Farming In Fintona. Computers To Blame.
Cow browses through Fintona Continental market
Fresh fears that farming in Fintona is now a fading occupation have magnified since the New Year after it was revealed that livestock were left unattended for three months as farmers played out their farming fantasies online. Although Facebook’s Farmville and Farmtown had claimed a few farming families in Fintona recently, the latest farming fads (Wii farming) during the festivities has confirmed fears that farming is approaching a thing of the past in the area.
These alarming developments were laid bare when cattle roamed freely down the Fintona Main Street whilst pigs wandered in and out of public houses without a bat on an eyelid, on January 3rd. A local ex-farmer, who wished to remain anonymous, told us of his predicament after neglecting his 200-year family farming traditions:
“I just can’t quit it. I’m not a big Facebook user but I always click on any link when I see the word ‘farm’. Herself would be on the Facebook and I was just messing around on Farmville. Before long I was calving more in three hours than I had in three years on the land. Sure, how could you turn that down? OK, no money was coming in but isn’t it a great feeling? I received savage satisfaction from boasting about it on her Facebook wall. I invited other farmers onto my virtual land. Previously all we had in common was gawking at the Farmers’ Wives magazine. Before long I was cultivating beyond my wildest dreams. It is far better than the stark reality of getting up at the age of 45 before dawn to red out the shed. I even talk to the wife now, on the computer, telling her about my harvest. I feel great. I need to shoot on here. Harry is watering my vegetables but he is a hoor for over-doing it.”
Pubs and clubs in Fintona experienced a sharp downturn in takings as their most loyal clientele remain indoors farming cabbages and keeping flowerbeds well weeded online. One pub owner, Gabriel McKenna, claimed:
“For feck sake. Them lazy balaxes are sitting on their arses in their spare rooms tending to virtual farms with their curtains pulled and probably bollock naked. This is fecked up beyond all recognition. The sheep are a wooly as feck now. Like Rastafarian sheep. Cattle are bulging. Pigs are just covered in so much shite that look like wild dingos. Orwell was right. These yokes will be running the joint soon. I had a big hairy yak in the bar yesterday slurping on a half pint of stout.”
The Fintona Farmers’ Forum have called for the Internet to be turned off in the town.
Paganism On The Rise In Galbally
A typical winter’s morning in Galbally
The mysterious arrival of a large batch of broomsticks to the community centre in Galbally has confirmed rumours that paganism is rife in the area and has been since 2006 when the seniors won Division 1B which sparked a free-love session. Speculation that pagan rituals were a weekly occurrence appears to have been close to the mark, upholding Galbally’s dark and murky traditions dating back to the Stone Age. With falling numbers attending the more traditional local places of worship, the rise in paganism explains away many of the unusual sightings of nude ring-a-rosies and the spate of yard-brush thefts in the community in recent years.
“I’m not surprised in the slightest”, farmer Harry Traynor explained. “I be up at the crack of dawn and I be seeing these wemen buck naked circling around a dead crow or the like. Then they’d just run off with a yard-brush between their legs. Not flying like. Just running. I be telling people and they’d be saying I’m going mad. Well, it looks as if I was on the ball. I don’t know much about pagans but I found it easy to get up in the mornings to be greeted by heartily bosomed wemen dancing about at 5am. The church should take note.”
An anonymous Galbally paganist told us that their numbers were touching on a hundred. She gave us an insight into their daily rituals.
“Lucksee, there’s no harm in it. Myself and the girls just get together two or three times a week at midnight, set out to kill some kind of wildlife and then just sacrifice it by either drinking its blood or reciting a poem over its corpse. Last week, Mary gave us a lovely rendition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol over the cold body a dying mink. It felt wholesome. Sometimes, if we don’t catch anything, he just grab some yahoo coming home full from the football club and strip him. He’s usually too far gone to remember and even if he does, he daren’t admit it around here. We haven’t quite mastered the broomsticks yet so we just run a few yards with them as a ceremonial thing.”
The Galbally Historical Society have welcomed the news, stating that it is simply an extension of the rich pagan history in the area dating right back to 40’000 years ago when Galbally was the epicentre for paganism in Europe. The society states that on the 6th day of the moon, Druid priests dressed in white robes would prepare a banquet beneath a tree and bring up to it two white bulls. A priest would then climb the tree and cut down a branch with an oul rusty sickle. The white bulls would be sacrificed while the attendants prayed to a god; the branch was then given to women in a drink which, it was believed, would make any Galbally woman attractive to all men.
Gortin Robin Hood Remains A Mystery
Gortin Robin Hood this morning
The identity of a man who robs visitors to Gortin to give back to the people of his village is still clouded in secrecy after a lucrative Christmas period saw locals experiencing their most plentiful and affluent festive celebrations since the area was founded in 1788 by a Portuguese explorer. Gortin, which depends on tourism from outsiders who come to stare at the locals, has a history of highwaymen that preyed on stray travellers to Omagh who’d get lost after buying nails or corn from the capital town. One such rogue, Gerty Keenan, was so admired that John Wayne was reported to have tracked him down and advised him, “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”.
The current outlaw, who wears a Simon Cowell novelty mask, green outfit and ginger wig, appears to do his best work in and around the forest. One such victim, Sally Prendergast from Newtownstewart, described her ordeal when she was robbed on Christmas Eve:
“I was taking the children to Gortin as it was a wet day and they said they wanted to look at the people down there. So, as a special treat, I took them up the road in the Renault Scenic only to be accosted by a mask-wearing midget who danced from foot to foot shouting ‘stand and deliver yiz hoors’. I threw him a lock of pounds and a few of them toys you get from McDonalds Happy Meals. He ran off yahooing. It was a great experience for the kids and they cannot wait to write about it when they get back to school.”
Locals have turned a blind eye to the masked villain as he left all households a gift on their doorsteps this Christmas from his loot: ragged scarves, broken car seats, ash trays, toy cameras that squirt but are missing the plug, out of date tax disks etc. Local PP Fr McCullagh said that although he was not condoning the mysterious rapscallion, it wasn’t as if he was slaughtering folk.
Tyrone Tribulations 