As soon as I saw Davy, I let a roar at him. “Wha’ in the name of Jaysus are you wearing, sunshine?” I says to him, loudly enough that a few of the other regulars looked around and had a little chuckle.
Davy’s face was already farmer-tan red but it somehow managed to go redder. I think the paint catalogues would call it crimson although I wouldn’t normally go in for that kind of messing. It’s green, not bleedin’ tortoise-shell whatever you’re having yourself.
Still but, crimson seems an appropriate colour for Davy’s face and he deserved the embarrassment. He was wearing one of them sleeveless numbers ye see them fellas that spend all their time looking at themselves in the mirror of fancy gyms wearing. Those lads are spanners of the highest order but at least they have the arms to be wearing them things. Davy’s arms are more of the baby sparrow variety.
“Leave it you, will ye,” he hisses back crankily at me. “I’m killed with this heat. I had to get out for a pint. At least it’s air conditioned here. Me gaff is like a sauna and the noise of that fan in the sitting room when I turn it on drives me mad. “It’s only on two. If I set it to three then I’m pretty sure it’s gonna take off.”
“You could open a window,” I says to him.
“Then all them bugs get in and ye know I can’t stand them creepy crawlies.”
“You’d think with all the bugging you do, they’d be like family to ye,” I says to him with a grin on me face. He got in a bit of a huff then and wouldn’t talk to me for a while, which was a pretty blissful state of affairs to be honest.
Eventually he looks away from his phone and back to me.“C’mere,” he says in that familiar tone he adopts when he’s got some sort of grand statement to make.
“Ah you’re talking to me again then, are ye?” I says.
But he rarely hears me when he gets into pontification mode.
“What do ye think of the idea of women priests?” he asks me.
“I’m not too keen on the idea of priests full stop,” says I.
“Ah I know that but like I don’t see what’s wrong with having them. Sure what does it matter at the end of the day. We’re blokes, right and like it or not, we live in a patriarchal society and that’s perpetuated by the likes of the church.”
“Do you know what any of what you just said means?” I asked him.
“I do yeah,” he says. “The daughter’s been educating me about it and I find I have to agree with her. Women have been oppressed forever basically. Why not let them be priests?”
“I’m not sure that’s the kind of liberation a lot of women have in mind to be honest Davy,” I says to him.
“I know, I know. But I still think it should be allowed. I was just reading on the phone there about the Archbishop giving out because that government minister took mass when there was no priest around.”
“Which minister is that?” I says to him.
“Ah one of those wishy, washy ones,” he says.
“Minister for painting and drawing or something like that. But she was pushing the whole repeal thing so that’s probably why the bishop was so annoyed I’d say.”
“That’s probably it,” I says to him and watched the smug look roll across his face.
Still and all though, male or female, she wouldn’t be the first politician to say mass.
