Are you sitting comfortably? I have horrors untold to recount the likes of which would coil the toes of the Divil himself, writes Killian Doyle
First off, there very nearly wasn't an Emission this week.
Clan Emissions was cruising leisurely through the back roads of Meath in the Bavarian Princess last Sunday afternoon when we stared Death squarely in the face. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't a bony-fingered scythe- carrying wraith in a black cowl, but a podgy, bald, 30-something thug with bad tattoos.
Rounding a blind corner, what did I see but said gentleman bearing down on us at a rapid rate of knots in a silver Golf on the wrong side of the road. He was about 50 feet in front of us and appeared to be trying to overtake a line of four cars. On a bend.
My right foot went down, hard. The four new shoes I'd bought the Princess the previous day did their job admirably. We juddered to a near-halt, slowing down just enough for Golf Boy to bully his way back onto his own side of the road.
He was so close I could see his acne scars as he passed. His face was blank, unflinching. That he didn't even acknowledge the fact he'd nearly sent me to wherever us atheists go when we pop our clogs made me hate him all the more.
It wasn't so much the fact he'd nearly killed us. It was that he'd stolen my peace of mind in so off-handed a manner, as if he did it to people all the time. For all I know, near misses were his hobby.
Had I not had Reduced Emissions in the car, you can safely assume I would've been going a mite quicker. In which case, you would have been reading my name in a different section of this paper, if you get my drift.
Rattled is not the word. Took me hours and a nice fat Cohiba Robusto to get over it. I'll be shaky for months.
Not as shaky as the brother-in-law, mind. Poor lad can't walk down the street without diving for the gutter at the slightest twitter of sound out of the ordinary.
See, the unfortunate chap was leaving work in Dublin city centre the other day when he was almost decapitated by a flying car.
The car in question had apparently clipped the rear of another and shot into the air in a direct trajectory towards the back of yer man's skull. He felt the whoosh of air approaching, turned at the last second and stepped sideways, just in time to watch it fly past him and into a lamppost.
It was so close that if he'd had his tongue out he could've licked the paintwork. His poor heart was going like a Russian submariner's bilge-pump. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt. Small comfort to the brother in law, whose nerves are destroyed.
And, if all the above hasn't got you cowering in terror behind the couch, never to venture forth again, here's the final nail for the coffin in which your confidence is to be buried.
Namely, the tale of the two lovely ladies of Birdhill who nearly became former lovely ladies of Birdhill last week in a bizarre incident in which a wheel flew off a passing lorry and in through the living room window of their house, narrowly missing them.
There you are sitting comfortably in your armchair nodding in agreement as Eddie Hobbs whines away in his comedy accent, when all of a sudden, the window implodes and a dirty great wheel plonks itself on the sofa beside you, uninvited. "Oh, hello there, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?" you ask said wheel before passing out in shock, dropping the proffered plate of Mikados in the process.
What's worse is their house had only recovered from being smashed into by another lorry last May. See why I'm an atheist?