“Thurles roads, take me home,
To the place I belong,
Tipperary, land of potholes, take me home.
Country roads”
(Apologies to the great late John Denver)
The windows of businesses premises in the town of Thurles are looking extremely inviting this festive season and it has also been confirmed, (so do please tell your kids); yes Santa Claus is comin’ to Thurles and the surrounding areas on Christmas Eve. This confirmation comes despite the failure of our local paid elected representatives to get the potholes in our streets, filled before Christmas.
Thurles you must understand is somewhat like Ahch-To Island, the birthplace of the Jedi Order, e.g. situated as we are at the edge of the map, lost in time in a galaxy far far away from Dublin and blanketed in large water-filled potholes.
Nevertheless, Santa has stated that since he spends most of his time on the roofs of houses in order to climb down and up chimneys; deplorable road surfaces in the town of Thurles are not being seen by him as an immediate problem, during this Christmas period.
However, residents of the town, despite seething inside, continue to remain remarkably voiceless on the topic, fearing we understand that if Santa got to hear about this issue, he might fear for the health and safety of reindeer and bypass the Thurles area altogether.
The funny thing about potholes is that they rarely appear if you use a miracle product which was first used some 80 years ago. From memory I believe it was called cement; environmentally friendly; can be recycled and required no expensive adhesive petroleum products. You can even add a black colourant to make it look like tarmacadam.
Speaking Of Thurles Potholes.
A woman some years back went to her priest to confess, “Fr”, said she, “I’ve committed adultery”. The priest forgives her; telling her not to let it happen again.
Within the next month, over 50 people had confessed claiming they had committed adultery. The priest decided that during his next sermon, he would make a statement on this issue. The next Sunday he declared the following:- “From now on, if anyone of you commits adultery, don’t tell me that you did. Instead, tell me something else, like ‘I tripped in a pothole’, for example”. So, from then on people began confessing to the priest that they had ‘tripped in a pothole’.
Years later the priest passed away as a consequence of old age. His replacement Curate knew nothing about the whole pothole issue. Whenever people informed him that they had ‘tripped in a pothole’, he would offer sympathy with the warning, “You really need to watch your step in future.”
Eventually one day, the priest decided to take this issue of potholes up with the local Town Clerk. “Excuse me Sir,” said he one day, “I think you need to examine the issue of potholes and set about making the required repairs to our town’s roads, as many of my congregation regularly keep tripping up in them; almost on a daily basis.
“Oh that,” sniggered an all knowing Town Clerk, who continued to laugh, aware that the priest had no idea regarding the background to this whole pothole episode.
The priest now stared at him before replying angrily, “This is really no laughing matter, Sir. Your wife alone has tripped in some 5 or 6 potholes in just the last 7 days!”
