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Dromore Bankrupt After Bad Santa. Nativity Play Worse.
Dromore Santa was a surprise
Dromore this morning is reeling from the news that yesterday’s Santa visit to the community hall coupled with the riotous behaviour after the nativity play has cost the village £1.2m. Plans are already in place to raise funds over the next five years with talk of the next few Christmases being low-key affairs or even cancelled until they foot the bill. What hurt the committee even more this morning was the realisation that they had hired the worse Santa in living memory and the farcical scenes during the much-anticipated festive play. Gerard McAllister, chairman of the Dromore Christmas Society, explains:
“We knew we were in trouble when Santa pulled up in the back of a pick-up truck which sped off in the Omagh direction. The fact that he was a woman was one obstacle to overcome – reeking of drink doubled the disappointment. With 300 expectant children and parents waiting in the hall, I had no option but to sober her up. It was then that she demanded her cheque up front – £500’000. Our treasurer had booked her through an advert in the Irish News without thrashing out a deal beforehand. It turned out she was a Men’s Club Stripping Santa. After a bit of pushing, slapping and shoving we agreed to write out the cheque as long as she kept her clothes on whilst dishing out the gifts which we also had to find at short notice. We scoured the changing rooms and managed to gather old socks, deodorant and dirty shorts to wrap. Anything lying about was considered. Although the children were a bit confused with the cleavage, lipstick and blonde hair, she kept it professional and only blew kisses and winked at a couple of fathers.”
Things went from bad to worse minutes before the Nativity play was to commence. Half the cast, all male, left to go with the Santa into Belfast. That left them without a Joseph, two wise kings and baby Jesus. Beforehand they were just worried about the depiction of Mary who was being played by McAllister’s mother, 86-year old Jenny McAllister.
“It didn’t take long before the boos were raining down on us. You have to understand how short the notice was. We managed to convince 5-year-old Harry Behan to play Joseph and he has an awful stutter. One of the Wise Kings was played by my 12-year-old border collie Rufus, and Mary gave birth to a melon in a blanket. It was all we had. Well, the crowd started to cut up rough. The children had opened their presents by this stage and the contents were being used as missiles. Studs, y-fronts and Deep Heat tubes were arrowing up on stage. Rufus got nervous and started piddling in the crib, ate the melon and then bit young Harry. It was awful. Just awful. I understood their anger. We’d charged them £30 in for this.”
The proceeding village riot cost an estimate £700’000 in damages. Barns were set alight and the traffic lights defaced. Fund-raising starts tonight with a wet sponge throwing stall. McAllister has volunteered to take the hits.
Dromore Courting Rituals To Be Studied at Queen’s
Happily married Dromore couple, today
Despite allegations that degrees and masters have been dumbed down over the past decade, Queen’s University have announced that they are to run a course in Courting Rituals in 2013, focusing mostly on the romantic customs around the Dromore and Tummery Road area. In what will be surely a tourism boost for the area, the course coordinator, Dr Gary Greene, claimed that the field trips will centre mainly on the Dromore area, taking in the night time habits in the dances and ceili at the weekends.
“There’s no denying that courting customs in the Dromore area are unique to most in the northern hemisphere. I have been studying them closely and feel there is enough to go on to create an honours degree in the subject. One such well-known custom I experienced up close during a Hallowe’en bonfire a couple of weeks ago. It started out with young women of all sizes sitting together around the bonfire and turning their spinning wheels. A group of men draped in red blankets and playing musical instruments, like the triangle or the spoons, approaches them, and each man chooses a woman to serenade with a song by one of the many country and western singers from Tyrone. If the woman of his choice likes him back, she’ll take out a small stool from under her skirt and invite him to sit on it. Then the man will wrap her in his red blanket, and they’ll start eating the face off each other, in a romantic-ish way. It really is a townland of passion.”
Other Dromore rituals such as ‘burdin’ (boarding in English) need to be witnessed inside the home. “Burdin” was once a common courting practice in northwestern Europe and Colonial America but is only practised in Dromore and especially on the Fintona Road. With parental oversight, an adolescent boy and girl would stay the night together in the same bed, but tightly wrapped in separate blankets, sometimes with a thick burd (board) or plank placed between them. This setup permitted intimacy but no groping. Parents says it got them used to the opposite sex whilst preventing them going ‘buck mad’ when they turned 18.
Dromore has the lowest percentages of divorce in Europe and is said to be rife with pleasant copulation.
Dromore a ‘Dark Place’ After Defeat
The mood in Dromore has been described as darker than the deepest recesses of outer space since their senior football side were defeated in the county final last Sunday. Not since 1838, when an English tourist labelled Dromore as a ‘bleak poor hilly town’ in a holiday brochure, has the ‘Large Ridge’ found itself wallowing in a slough of self-pity and despair. No bins have been collected, cattle milked nor men washed since the loss four days ago and the outlook shows no sign of improvement. Housewife Katie McCarron refuses to see any light at the end of the tunnel:
“It’s buckin ridiculous now. Jaysus, I know the football is big an all in Dromore but these lads need to catch a grip of themselves. My husband, a stalwart on the team, hasn’t taken a shower since Sunday morning. He’s still in his muddied kit, just sitting and sleeping on the couch watching reruns of Starsky and Hutch. The only time he rises is for the toilet but he’s even too depressed to flush it. He’s normally very aware of his appearance and was a rather gorgeous man. Now, he just looks like an oul hobo from Omagh. Not one fcuk does he give right now about anything. He should be shot with a ball of his own shite.”
Dromore, since Sunday
With rubbish piling up on the roads and loanans, cattle at bursting point and drunk men staggering from The Central Bar, pishing all over the place, women have given the male population 24 hours to snap out of it or they’re going to start flirting with lads from Trillick.
“I’m giving my lad another day. If no improvement, I’m heading down the Galbally Road and grabbing one of them Trillick boys. They’ll never be left in that post-county final depression, let’s be honest.”
Dromore Man Has Cut On Leg – Fears For Sanity
Dromore butcher, Seamus Hassett, was said to be ‘inconsolable’ after a quick shower this morning unearthed a cut on his shin. The normally mild-mannered meat merchant was blubbering wildly as family and friends rallied around his house in a show of support.
“I hadn’t taken a shower since last Monday and didn’t think much more of it. As I was soaping away I saw a small cut on my leg, about the width of my small fingernail. I have no recollection of how it got there. You’d think you’d remember something like that.”
The leg. Cut not visible to naked eye.
Hassett gathered his family downstairs and, dressed in only a Transformers towel, questioned them on the cut to see if they could remember anything.
“All I saw were blank faces. Not a dicky. Then my youngest son got his iPhone out and typed in memory loss into the Internet. What he said next has haunted me for the rest of my life, well, since this morning. He mentioned things like Alzheimers, dementia, severe cognitive impairment, aging, depression and death. I just cannot believe it. There was one time, in 1988, when I went out into the shed and forgot why I had headed out there in the first place, for about twenty seconds. I then remembered it was to get a hatchet. I thought that was a one-off but obviously it was a very early warning sign.”
One comfort for Seamus has been the speed of well wishers to the house this morning. A distant cousin, Johnny McMenamin, was the first to arrive at the family home on the Tattysallagh Road.
“To be honest it’s a bit of excitement. Not since the town was burnt to the ground in 1798 has there been this much talk in Dromore. I’m devastated at the news. Jaysus. It could happen to anyone of us at any time and if the Internet says he’s more or less a goner then so be it. My condolences to his family and I can reassure Seamus that we’ll look after his wonderful and beautiful wife as well as the children.”
A collection will be made at the county final involving Dromore and Errigal Ciaran to raise money for whatever Seamus has and if he still has it.
Tyrone Tribulations 