Some handbag

    BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE

A Caledon man is being treated for what is believed to be post traumatic stress disorder, after venturing into his wife’s handbag to get a Polo mint.

59-year old Fergal Coughlan, a gas-lighter from Caledon, was travelling back from mass with his wife Nellie on Sunday morning when he asked her for a sweet, who instructed him to ‘go into the left hand bit’ of her handbag.

“Jaysus, it was tara boys”, said the distressed Coughlan. “One minute I was asking for a wee sweetie and the next minute it was like falling down thon wormhole in Alice in Wonderland. Remember Mary Poppins’ handbag? It was like that, except with more stuff in it. I’ve seen things that’ll stay with me til I go to the grave”.

Coughlan claims he found a pair of pliers, a half-eaten Marathon bar, a balaclava, a ticket stub for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, a verruca sock, an old photo of Kevin McCabe, some paper clips, and a packet of unused strawberry-flavoured condoms.

“I’m disgusted and affronted”, remarked Coughlan. “What on earth was she doing with a Marathon? She doesn’t even like chocolate. And it was covered with mould. It must have been there for years. The nuts nearly broke my teeth it was that bad”.

Coughlan also claims he found half a brick, a pair of castanets, three Betamax video recordings of Starsky and Hutch, a radiator bleed key, ten unused, ripped-up pairs of tickets for Gareth Gates, and a pound of mince.

Commenting on her husband’s traumatic episode, wife Kitty told us,

“He needs to grow a pair. A woman needs all sorts of bits and bobs. Be prepared, that’s my motto. And anyway, he went into the wrong bit. When I said ‘left hand bit’, I meant left hand bit at the front outside, not the inside at the back. The clift”.

“And after all that?” said the despondent husband. “No feckin’ polo mints”.