Newry News and Irish Fun
John McCullagh 
Hughie’s friend, who was with him at the end, came to the funeral. He had tried to lift the car off his shattered chest. Ignoring everyone else as he entered, he headed straight for the small bedroom when Hughie’s body lay at rest. He left soon after.
She was the daughter of Mary Ward who was herself the daughter of a coachman on the Church Hill estate of the Verners of Loughgall. Indeed one of these Verners was the first Grand Master of the Orange Order in the previous generation.
‘My aunt was a very nice person who often cooked meals for me’, admitted Nobu Taki when questioned about her murder. ‘In fact she was a saint. But our family business was badly strapped for cash and I had to do something!’
The family had an undertaking business and he naturally assumed his rich aunt would choose the family firm for her burial. She had indicated this preference. Unfortunately when she expired so suddenly, the choice was taken from her and her next-of-kin chose a rival firm. Funerals in Japan can cost over $20,000, a sum sufficient to help rescue the family firm.
‘I broke into her house and beat her to death with a golf club. I only did it to protect the honour of our family. I thought that the suicide note that I faked would convince everyone. I see now that I made a basic mistake by signing my own name at the end of it.’
The note fooled the police initially who put the death down to suicide [possibly the most extreme example of self-mutilation they had ever witnessed?]. It was only when some one noticed the Taki funeral service was on the point of bankruptcy that the note was checked again, and Nobu was taken in for questioning.
On market days and fair days our little streets were crowded with farm horses and carts. In the big stable yards behind the public houses the dealers sold their animals to the country men. We were much more interested …
Now the engineer eyed the designer
An’ the designer, he looked at ‘The Hat’
An’ they whispered, the one till the other,
‘Diagonal Steam Trap? ………….. What’s that?’
When they thought it safe to journey through Ireland (i.e. when the ‘natives’ were sufficiently subjugated) various English gentlemen-of-leisure ventured to the smaller island, to give account, in books, diaries and journals, of the new countryside they had explored and the valiant efforts of their fellow-countrymen to bring civilisation to the savages.
I was uncontrollably propelled forward, colliding with the buggy and sustained an abrasion to my ankle.
I have again received enquiries from people whose forebears served in the Great War but are not included in these lists. They may be comprehensive but obviously incomplete.
I like many “liberal” Irish Protestants, admired Gaelic games and sportsmen like the eminent Sean O’Neill (whom Newry rightly honours among its greatest sons) and the remarkable Sean Hollywood – but the sad reality is that I could not feel that there was any real place for me in the GAA.