Category Archives: Strabane
Strabane Prepares For End Of Civilisation on the 21st
Strabane today. Last minute worship.
Strabane, traditionally a few steps ahead of the rest of the county, have shown the way again by drawing up a watertight schedule for the end of the world on Friday. Whilst other towns and villages in Tyrone have received the Mayan prophecy with a sizeable degree of scepticism, the home of Hugo Duncan have bought one hundred percent into the doomsday scenario and have all received leaflets tonight offering instructions and advice for the apocalypse. Driving the initiative is local lunatic Damien McElhinney, a former taxi driver for the clergy.
“You have to laugh at them eejits up in Sion Mills. They’re waltzing about thinking things will be OK. Well, they’ll be kicking themselves when they’re hurriedly faced with the Final Judgement unprepared whilst the Strabane ones don’t bat an eyelid. I have been able to pinpoint the cataclysm at around 9:30pm on Friday, just before The Late Late Show starts. All farmers in the area have been told to have the milking done and land red up by around six. Then the spuds should be on the table long before The One Show starts. The rest of the time should be set aside to tidying the house, homework completed and then baths for the children, and general relaxation before the planet implodes and we’re transported to our everlasting paradise. Them Omagh ones are going to be raging at our meticulous planning whilst they worry about hair straighteners left on or the dog roaming the rampart.”
Although refusing to be drawn on the exact nature of the End of Times, McElhinney says there’ll be an unbearable sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth coupled with horrifying groans of the fatally maimed, but not in Strabane.
“We’ve decided to bring forward the Strabane Community Lottery a day from Saturday as there’d be some complaining about it from this shower, even up in Nirvana.”
What’s On In Tyrone This Weekend – Nov 1st-2nd
COOKSTOWN
PARADE OF THE ELEPHANTS – Barney Eastwood and Jimmy Cricket lead the annual Parade of the Elephants at 10am Saturday morning. These fine creatures, 9 in total, live on the Tullhogue side of the town and are native to the area. They are a distant relative to the elephants you’d see in programmes about Africa and barely survived the hose pipe ban of 1995. Young children at risk from being excreted on so caution needs to be exercised.
COALISLAND/CLONOE LEAGUE FINAL
Edendork will witness the coming together of Coalisland and Clonoe people – a must-see event (Sat 2pm). The East Tyrone diaspora are a uniquely indigenous people, many of whom haven’t set foot out of a 15-mile radius of the area apart from going to Nutt’s Corner in the lead up to Christmas. Sit back and watch how they interact using one-syllable words. Witness their jeans and tucked-in jumpers – a real heart warmer. Observe how they manage to throw a pound into the turnstyle and get away with it by employing a pretend innocent ignorance that you had to pay in at all. Get there tomorrow before they start watching Friends and change.
OMAGH
Celebration of Polygamy. The marriage of one man and several women or one woman and several men, is prohibited in modern day Omagh, but only in the first weekend of December and must be terminated by St Stephen’s Day. The great Seamus McMahon, the oldest living functional man in Omagh, is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Sunday polygamy service starts at 4pm Sunday at Healy Park.
STRABANE
Baler Twine Belt Competition. Sunday 9am sees the inaugural baler twine belt event. Men and women will parade down the main street in their Sunday best with only baler twine holding up their modesty. Best twine judged by Hugo Duncan and Jimmy McGuinness.
Tyrone Lonely Hearts – Volume 3
Beragh ex-English Literature teacher (66) seeks a wholesome woman with good teeth, soft lips, sweet breath, with eyes no matter what colour so they are but expressive; of a healthy complexion, rather inclin’d to fair than brown; neat in her person, her bosom full, plump, firm and white; a good understanding, without being a wit, but cheerful and lively in conversation, polite and delicate of speech, her temper humane and tender, and to look as if she could feel delight where she wishes to give it. No Clogher women need apply.
Ardboe man (54), unemployed clown, seeks woman with no bodily deformity.
Fintona gardener (55), ploughing the loneliest of furrows, twelve personal ads and counting. Only one reply. It was my mother telling me not to forget the bread on my way home from the library. Seeks anyone.
Strabane woman (44), pessimistic, practical and forward thinking, would like you to list your top 10 treasured possessions – just want to know if there’s anything worth keeping when we finally break up.
Brocagh lad (23) seeks a woman who is a man. Sorry mummy.
Compulsive-eating Galbally woman, 52, would like to meet a man of up to 25 for whom the phrase ‘beauty is only skin-deep’ is both a lifestyle choice and a religious ethos.
Kildress window-cleaner, 50, in desperate need of a ride, anything considered.
Plumbridge Lady, 49, seeks companion to ramble around Gortin Glen with. I cannot guarantee you’ll fall in love with me, but I can promise you the best home-brewed brandy ball poitin you’ll have ever tasted.
Moortown carpet fitter, 39, will entertain anyone from totally blind to completely incapacitated. Will treat you to the finest collection of dried stuffed eels this side of the lough. Weekend taxidermist.
Derrytresk plumber, 61, seeks woman with boat. Please send photo of boat.
Tyrone Classifieds Volume 2
FOR SALE
Metal set of drawers. Stood the test of time. Sleeps six children. Great for big traditional family. DREGISH
Collection of old people. Retirement home fire-sale. No real bother apart from wiping and scraping. DUNGANNON
Cheap Divorces! End the misery today! OMAGH
Home-made portable toilet. Great for attending GAA or soccer games or going to a march. Serviced recently. GLENELLY
Have you had a heart attack or died? We can help. Cardiac Discussion Group. ARDBOE
Freshly cut Christmas Trees. Can be delivered by December 28th. Local produce. FINTONA
Part-time head-lice puller. Great with children. BROCAGH
Turkey for sale. Only partially eaten. Wasn’t stuffed. STRABANE
Donkey with a red cowboy hat on. Answers to Hetty. Do not look direct in eye. EDENDORK
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
Tyrone Court Notices – October 2012
I SAID NO ONE MOVE
Two Stewartstown mechanics have been refused bail after a botched robbery attempt in the local Post Office. McKnight and Hobson were attempting to rob the popular PO during lunch time yesterday only to be foiled by a misunderstanding between the pair. McKnight shouted “b’jaysus, nobody move” after securing the doors tight. All staff and customers obediently stood still whilst his fellow robber moved to collect the money from the counter and was promptly shot in the leg by his nervous partner. Case adjourned until Hobson recovers.
A SLOW DAY
A robbery in Coalisland was foiled when police managed to arrest the villain after two hours from the commencement of the dastardly deed. Murray held up the town’s chip shop and tied up the owner only to find there were few takings in the till (£9.50). He proceeded to put on the shop’s overalls and worked for two hours serving locals chips, fish, mineral and sausages in order to boost his takings by which time the PSNI arrived and arrested him. The judged sentenced Murray to three months but commended him on his work ethic.
UNDERAGE ROBBERY
A canny Strabane off-license vendor saved the day after an initially successful robbery of the till in the town’s Winemart. The Sion Mills robber, Mr Tomney, held up the off-license and filled his bags with the takings. He then demanded a bottle of whiskey from behind the counter. The fast thinking cashier, Mick Lundy, asked for ID to prove he was over 18. Tomney supplied it before making off with £45 and a bottle of Ardbeg single malt. Lundy immediately phoned the police with the naive robber’s name and address. The were waiting for him as he arrived home. Tomney is out on bail.
OLD HAGS
The Omagh Witch Trials began yesterday, the first of its kind in Ireland since 1467. Thirteen women were reported to authorities last weekend of possessing hag-like appearances and mumbling incoherently at the end of the night in the town square. The defense pointed to the fact that they were simply a group of Tattyreagh girls dressed up for the night to the best of their ability and were simply palatic by the time they spilled out onto the street at 1am. The prosecution, the Reverend Willy Smith, said he’d never seen such she-devil behaviour since a night out in Maynooth in 1969. The trial continues.
Strabane Woman ‘Not At Herself’ After ‘Bad Oul Bug’
Farmer, this morning
One of Strabane’s most respected citizens, 86 year old ex-stripper Jane Farmer, has still not completely recovered from a ‘bad oul bug’ she thinks she got after not washing her hands immediately after visiting an old people’s home in Sion Mills. Farmer, who used to dance seductively for visiting American soldiers during the Second World War for twenty dollars, claims she is ‘not at herself’ at all since the worst of the bug left her system.
“Feck me pink”, the octogenarian said, ” I put some time of it in there. Anything I ate came straight up and I love me pork chops. That was hard to take but it wasn’t the worst part. The shite was flying straight out of me. I’d be queuing up for the pension and you’d just hear the slap of it hitting the ground. I’m too long in the tooth to be embarrassed about it and if others were offended then they need to toughen up. These modern day people are useless with their private computers and mobile telephones. In my day you’d be mopping up your family’s dung every day and never bat an eyelid. Don’t get me started. What are them young people wearing. I saw a lad today and his trousers were below his briefs. A boy like that would have been strung up on a lamp-post in Strabane town in my day. Big dirty boxer shorts. Some bollocks that.”
Farmer thinks she contacted the bug when visiting her younger sister (82) in an old people’s home four miles away. Maisie Farmer, like Jane, never married and lived with her sister until they fell out over religion in 1999. Since then they have patched things up with Maisie moving in the the old people’s home to chase one-time dreamboat Dick Logan (89) who was an ex-marine from the 1950s.
“Maisie said she wasn’t at herself either and had been throwing up all week with the odd dose of explosive diarrhea. I asked her why the feck she hadn’t said it earlier. Typical selfish demented oul bitch. She just sits and stares at that tramp Dick Logan and him completely insane, dribbing away like a child. The smell of pish off him too. Stupidly, I got back into my Nova without washing my hands. Driving home was another bad experience with these sunglassed hoors in their massive cars and a pack of screaming spoilt pricks in the back. In my day you went to bed elated if you only got one welt around the head for coughing or sneezing. Don’t know they’re born.”
Jane hopes to be at herself tomorrow.
Strabane Woman Refuses to Believe Proverbs
Alienated Strabane lady, Mifter Maguire, has enraged the local headmasters and clergy by publicly denouncing many proverbs that have reportedly held the town together as a close-knit community for centuries. Standing on a Guinness crate outside Mass last Sunday, Maguire rhymed off a litany of useless proverbs, often using extreme measure to prove their pointlessness.
Better than a biro
Starting off with ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, she lifted a young lad from under her skirt (later identified as a nephew) and jabbed him several times in the thigh with a pen. After mild pleas from the boy to be released, she produced a machete-like instrument and hacked uncontrollably at the unfortunate guinea pig’s buttocks, the boy saved only by grabbing the aforementioned biro and stabbing Mifter in the ear.
As the crowds increasingly gathered closer, she dismissed many other idiomatic expressions including ‘you are what you eat’ by devouring a packet of Beef Faggots from Birmingham and asking the crowd to ‘explain that then’. Maguire was taken away by the local Health Care assistants midway through destroying the figure of speech that ‘it could be worse’ but long before a sizable few of the Strabane congregation left completely dejected at their life so far.
Tyrone Tribulations 