Category Archives: Loughmacrory
What’s On In Tyrone: Oct 20-21
COOKSTOWN
Wife-carrying competition. All participants must register in the field behind the convent. Women must be over 12 stone and fully clothed. Distance 400 metres. Winner receives a token for a pint in Mulligans as long as they buy another. Sunday 9am.
STRABANE
Sat, 4pm. Tar-Barrel Racing. This annual event involves people racing through the streets of the town, carrying flaming wooden barrels of burning tar on their backs. This ancient game has been a staple feature of Strabane life since 1888 when John McElhinney was convicted of stealing his neighbour’s underwear from her line and made to walk through the town carrying a tar barrel alight. Patron please take notice that there’ll be no medical facilities on offer.
BALLYGAWLEY
This weekend sees the return of Plough Sunday, a day when ploughmen traditionally blacken their faces with cow clap (or manure) and dance up and down the Whitebridge Road singing “Hickory Dickory Dock”. No one knows the origin of this but people flock from all over to see these strange customs. Stalls will be on display, showcasing homegrown Ballygawley produce such as grass, blackberries and sticks. Paudge Quinn will lead the dancing, heavily manured.
MOY
Loughmacrory Didn’t Know Making Poitin Was Illegal
A typical Loughmacrory working day
A successful raid on most homes in Loughmacrory late last night has proven fruitless despite the discovery of 48 poitin-making distilleries within a two-mile radius. This morning, the judge accepted the unanimous defence plea that they didn’t know what they were doing was illegal. The midnight swoop caught most of the townland on the hop with the PSNI quoting up to 6000 litres of the homemade alcohol retrieved. They had been tipped off by the loose talk around Omagh regarding a permanent state of happy drunkiness in Loughmacrory as well as a persistent alcoholic haze in the general area.
“I’d just finished brewing my 6th bottle of the night and was about to shut up shop when the peelers burst in,” a local cat castrator told us. “I thought they were here for the poaching but they just starting lifting the drop of the hard stuff. I told them it was £7 a bottle and the main man told me not to be cheeky. How were we to know it was illegal? I’d never saw no adverts on it and it isn’t in the ten commandments.”
At the trial this morning it soon emerged that no one in Loughmacrory thought it was outside the law. One mother told the judge that she’d often send her children to school with a pinch of poitin in their flasks “cos it was cheaper than diluted juice”. The jury took no time to decide that the locals should be given a by-ball as long as they all undertake a course in what’s lawful in today’s society.
Judge McGrath concluded:
“It is abundantly clear now that Loughmacrory has been overlooked when it comes to the rules and regulations of law abiding citizenship. Further investigations have shown up no pre-conception of car insurance, road tax, land laws, tv or dog licensing, VAT and every other government tax going. It really is the back-end of beyond, time-locked in a period perhaps before Christ himself. All families will undertake a 12-week induction into normal day-to-day life in the 21st century.”
He added that their skills were above average as he had sampled the poitin himself and that it “wasn’t bad at all for seven quid“.
Loughmacrory Man Caught With Clear Diesel
Shamed Loughmacrory surgeon Peter Whittle has vowed to clear his name after being accused of using clear diesel in his Vauxhall Zafira on the Omagh to Cookstown road last month. In the first of its kind in the greater Loughmacrory area, Whittle was dipped as he made his way to Cookstown to buy a pair of ill-fitting jeans for a dance from a Pakistani merchant on one of the stalls at the world-famous market, and was found to be completely innocent.
“I was being flashed at by cars for about half a mile so I slowed right down to 80 thinking them bastards had the hair drier out. It wasn’t until the traffic came to a standstill that I realised they were dipping. My life flashed before my eyes as I knew I was on the clear, legit stuff.”
Whittle was clean, unfortunately
For fear of serious slagging if the word ever got out, the Loughmacrory medic tried everything to convince the PSNI that he was a hardcore red-diesel dealer in order to save face.
“I threw everything at them. I even gave them the address of my farmhouse hidden around the back of my garage which is packed to the rafters with red, green and all manner of dyed fuel even though I own no agricultural machinery at all. I fix legs for feck sake. I also admitted I was making poitin and was, in fact, half-cut at the time. They just laughed and said ‘you’re clean’ and told me to drive on. Most of Loughmacrory were pulled over at the side of the road and getting details taken. They just shook their heads as I drove past. I was mortified. In order to mend my family’s fine name, never again will I go legit.”
Whittle’s immediate family refused to comment but one uncle did remark that he wasn’t surprised at the news as “young Peter was always a bit odd like that. The sort of boy who never worked whilst signing on. Wouldn’t marry the cousin. His shame knows no bounds.”
Tyrone Tribulations 