Monthly Archives: April 2017
Cookstown Man Arrested Under The Marketing of Potatoes Act (1964)
A Cookstown entrepreneur who was caught in Malaga Airport with a large bag of home-grown potatoes with sunglasses on them in his suitcase is facing up to three years in prison after breaking the Marketing of Potatoes Act (1964) and assaulting a Spanish officer.
The Act, which states that a constable may seize and may detain in custody any potatoes which are being or which are suspected by such an officer or constable of being, sent out of Northern Ireland, hasn’t been used since the great Cappagh Spud Scandal in 1966.
Seamus Sheehey, who admitted to planning to set up a stall on a beach in the south of Spain to sell his 300 potatoes, maintains the heavy-handedness of the Spanish police led him to head-butting one of them and running off, shouting ‘leave my spuds alone yiz bastids’, according to startled onlookers.
“How was I to know about that law? I just remembered how last year I was lying on a beach in Benalmadena and thinking ‘jaysus I’ve love a good spud now’ and the sweat beating off us. I’m sure others felt the same. But there was no need for the Spanish police to start rummaging through my suitcase and throwing my potatoes all over the place, wrecking their sunglasses disguise. It was intimidation.”
Sheehey was already facing community service as well as a ban on being anywhere near a potato field before he headbutted the Spanish officer.
The case brought back memories of the Cappagh Spud Scandal when three Cappagh men were caught at Dun Laoghaire with over 20 tonnes of Tyrone potatoes painted in different colours to resemble large marbles, bound for England.
Club Players In Tyrone May Be Forced To Play At Midnight, In Car Parks
Brackaville, at night.
A leaked document supposedly drawn up by the Tyrone County Board at the start of the year indicated that several radical club game proposals were considered, aimed at giving the county players the best chance at All-Ireland success.
Amongst the more controversial ideas was to play FOUR rounds of league games at midnight on a Sunday to give county players more time to train with the county all weekend, playing some games in car parks to preserve the pitches for county training, and to play at some unusual venues such as the boxing club for Ardboe/Fianna and Barcelona for Clonoe/Dromore.
A club football activist, Reginald McSherry, maintains the leaked plans is another nail in the coffin for non-county players in Tyrone:
“Doesn’t surprise me a jot. Them boys in suits really do think the new CPA stands for the Crap Players Association. Never mind the midnight games or car park venues, but to drag the Clonoe v Dromore game to the Nou Camp in Barcelona is scandalous. Everyone knows Mickey O’Neill cannot fly. He’d be driving for 2 weeks. It’s just another way to get county players off playing club games.”
The County Board also considered imposing a ban on non-county players wearing fancy-coloured boots as it was generally perceived by the board that they were getting above their station and thinking they were deadly. One proposal which did get the go-ahead was that only county players can use the official gym equipment in Garvaghey. Non-county players can use less expensive props such as wheelbarrow ramps and cans of soup.
95% of the proposals were rejected due to a delay in the paperwork but will be reviewed in 12 months depending on who’s in charge of the county team.
Cow Dung Art Gallery To Be Built In Ballygawley
Following a surge in the popularity of cow-dung art in mid-Ulster, the Department of Arts and Entertainment has given the go-ahead for a state of the art gallery beside the Garvaghey pitches to showcase the best of what Tyrone have to offer in this discipline.
Cow-dung art, also known as An Pictiur Shoite in Irish, dates back to the time of St Patrick when a group of poor women, in an area of what is now known as Cookstown, offered St Patrick some dung-art in appreciation for the great Masses he said when passing through.
In recent weeks, cow-dung art has experienced something of a resurgence in the county after a 62-year-old posted an Instagram picture he created of his wife in a bikini using only the fresh dung of his own cattle.
Gerry McGarrity, who boasts over 500 drawings he created using only local produce and his fingers, said the centre could draw millions of tourists to Tyrone in the same way as the Louvre in Paris:
“There’s a big market for cow-dung art across the globe. It is a form of 3D art as you can smell the pictures as well as look at them. In my opinion it’s £4.5m of tax-payers money well spent. Think of the chip van or potato stall potential outside the building too, bringing more money to the local community.”
Early brochures suggest that the picture of McGarrity’s wife in the bikini will be the ‘Mona Lisa’ flagship display for the cow-dung arts centre and will be called ‘McGarrity’s Wife In A Bikini’.
Omagh Election Poster Maker ‘Richest Man In Ireland’ According To Sunday Times Rich-List
lucrative business
A freelance election poster maker from out the Tattyreagh Road, who has managed to monopolise the election poster business across all parties since 2007, has become the richest man in Ireland according to a list released on Easter Sunday by an English newspaper.
John McMahon (56) is reportedly ‘flat out’ making new posters as we go to print, having today been given the nod by Stormont politicians for another polling session. In addition, the Dungannon Campus in the South West College has already started enrolling students for ‘Poster-Making’ Diplomas starting in September 2017.
Taking a break from making a set of new posters for the SDLP, McMahon was unwilling to talk about how much he’d actually made in the last 12 months:
“Let’s just say I can now afford to go to the pictures and buy food there without having to take out a Credit Union loan. I’ve an exclusive agreement with the DUP, TUV, UUP, SF, SDLP, Greens, Alliance and a couple of others. And they all pay well, especially if I touch up a few of them using Photoshop.”
McMahon also confessed that the business also almost cost him his marriage after he was accused of spending ‘too long touching up’ a couple of the new Sinn Fein MLAs’ posters.
McMahon denied he was involved in a turf war when a rival election poster business had to close down due to a series of defaced posters from the new company appeared in Mid-Ulster, with crude drawings of male genitalia appearing on the posters of several prominent DUP politicians.
“I can categorically state that was NOT me”
he said before walking back into his shed, laughing his head off.
McMahon’s business is reportedly raking in over £3m a year with many unused posters being sold on the black market to bonfire builders.
Thousands Disappointed As Northern Lights In Derrylaughan Was Just A Moss Fire
Hundreds of aspiring astronomists from as far away as Iceland and Japan were left disappointed after several Twitter photos of an apparently crystal clear vision of the Aurora Borealis in East Tyrone turned out to be a false alarm.
The chance of seeing the incredible light show caused by collisions between electrically charged particles released from the sun that enter the earth’s atmosphere and collide with gases such as oxygen and nitrogen brought hordes of visitors to the area on Good Friday, only to be told it was simply one of the McAliskeys burning all the brackens up the moss.
Falls’ Bar, though, has reported record takings as over 1300 budding stargazers took refuge in the pub before getting a taxi back to Aldergrove Airport.
Local man and part time badger-catcher, Felix Hagan, said the mistake has caused untold damage to the roads around the lough:
“At one time I counted 766 people standing on the Ferry Road looking at the moss on fire, taking photos and stuff. Half of them were Asian and there were even ones from Donegal. When word filtered through that it wasn’t the Northern Lights at all but McAliskey up to no good again, they all marched down to Falls’ Bar for refreshments. I hope they weren’t looking cocktails or anything fancy. But they tramped the road into shite.”
Several hundred are reportedly staying another day in the area due to flight delays, with many looking forward to the Derrylaughan/Aghyaran game halfway up the country. Tyrone GAA officials were quick to announce that all Division 2 club games will see an entrance fee of £20 for this weekend alone and that the presence of 550 wealthy tourists was just a coincidence.
Mountains Of Pomeroy ‘Fake News’ Says American Government
Mountains?
The existence of mountains in Pomeroy has been declared as thee classic example of fake news according to sources close to the American President, Donald Trump.
Trump, who compiled a list of traditional fake news stories that particularly annoy him, placed the mystical geographical features of Pomeroy at the top of his list and has threatened anyone singing the song in the USA with an indefinite stay at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Felicity Begley, whose ancestors left Ireland for America in the 1930s, explained how she was lifted and sternly warned in a bar in New York three lines into the traditional song.
“I’d only made it as far as ‘when the maid she bound her golden hair‘ before men in sunglasses started talking into their sleeves in corners of the bar and I was pounced on my these big men in black. I was bundled into a tank and driven to some water-boarding centre and threatened with their torture devices if I didn’t remounce Renardine and those mountains. The thing is, I agree with them….there are no buckin mountains in Pomeroy.”
Trump reportedly deliberated long and hard over the Hills Above Drumquin but relented when a Google Maps image showed some semblance of hills in the background.
The American Government are currently looking into why George Sigerson wrote about mountains in Pomeroy in the first place and are considering the theory he was on the books of Bill Clinton’s grandfather who holidayed in Strabane in 1901.
Lost Old Testament Verse Confirms Moses Visited Coalisland
Moses approaching the Lineside
The recently discovered Book of Aloysious, which was dug up by a pack of hounds on a beach near the Holy Lands, has confirmed a long-held suspicion that Moses visited Coalisland in search of something around 1300BC.
The 15-line discovery described how Moses passed through the town, stopping for for refreshments and a few fights before heading on to Omagh. In an exclusive, Tyrone Tribulations can publish the passage in its entirety.
BOOK OF ALOYSIOUS:
- And Moses gave his loyal donkey one last kick so to reach what was called the ‘island.
- But donkey died of exhaustion because of the big stone thing on his back and was swiftly devoured by the locals who were a hungry people.
- Moses said onto the ‘islanders “where can thou get a drink and something to ate?”
- The ‘islanders looked at each other and one man, the leader called Sullivan, pointed at the small shop called Landees and Moses was happy.
- Moses entered Landees and hailed a supper of fish and a drink of Lilt but was surprised it cost 500 coins.
- And Moses asked Sullivan if there were any virgins for him to pick and Sullivan laughed and screamed in mock anger ‘Holy Moses, are thou kidding ye bollix?’
- Moses answered “Well then bring me a heifer three years old, a she-goat, three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon”
- And Sullivan gave Moses the finger and said “aye I will, like” and walked off towards his own shop, laughing his head of and saying “Yer man’s pure mental”.
- A man called Lucan of Derryvale disliked Moses because of the turn in his eye and began to fight him with a sword but Moses was a great fighter and and Moses reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into Lucan of Derryvale’s belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.
- And Moses said to bystanders “yiz’ll get the same treatment yiz shower a savages” and flashed his enormous testicles. And Mrs Lucan the new widow of Derryvale smiled. And Moses lifted the big stone thing he was carrying.
- Moses devoured his supper of fish and his drink of Lilt and made for the off-licence through a dangerous maze of donkeys because, in the ‘Island, donkeys could park anywhere.
- And Moses saw a man hanging from a light and asked a resident “Who hangs there?”
- A man with little teeth from the lowlands told him it was a donkey warden and that he was the three score and ten donkey warden to hang that week. And there was much mirth from the locals when thus was said.
- Moses purchased 4 bottles of vodka and a box of beef Mini Chips and walked towards the hill of Brackaville but not before fighting another one of the Lucans and he cursed the ‘Islanders and God sent 40 bears from Gortgonis and they starting fighting the ‘Islanders but the ‘Islanders were expert snipers and defeated the bears.
- And Moses ran like mad up towards Brackaville with his big stone, never to speak of the ‘Islanders again.
Tyrone Tribulations 