You have to hand it to David Stanton. Mighty man. Never heard of him? Don't worry. I hadn't either until a missive from the Fine Gael press office flooded into my e-mail inbox, writes Kilian Doyle.
Turns out Stanton is a Cork East TD and FG's social and family affairs spokesman. Which makes him Martin Cullen's nemesis. This fact, as you would imagine, endeared him to me instantly.
"The recent . . . continuous rain has highlighted the dire need for more bus shelters to be provided around the country," says the presser.
I guffawed like a record-breaking guffawer at the world guffawing championships.
Not at the logic - which you'll agree is watertight. I can attest to the perils of standing unsheltered at the roadside. Many's the bus I've sat on damp as an otter's armpit, and reeking like a wet basset hound, great big dirty puddles forming around my shoes as my feet of clay dissolved into muck.
Anyway, what had me in floods of giggles was Stanton's blatant opportunism. Here we are a nation sodden again and he uses it to score political points. No surprise really. A small fish in a big pond, he's usually drowned out by the big sharks milling around. This being silly season, he's just casting a line out, hoping for a bite. And I took the bait (David, if by chance you are reading this, I hope you realise I'm only codding. Being a politician, that should be like water off a duck's back to you. I know you're just looking for a bit of exposure. But you'd want to be careful of that - the aul' exposure could kill you. Just ask the unfortunates stuck standing at the roofless bus stops).
The lengthy deluge that prompted Stanton's statement has had a terrible affect on me. I have been de-evolving rapidly, regressing into mudskipperdom at an alarming rate. There was more than a hint of webbing developing between my fingers and toes, and I spent last week sporting a polo neck. Not in honour of Padraig Harrington, but rather because I was trying to hide my gills.
Worst of all, I couldn't get behind the wheel of my car with the dorsal fin jutting out from between my shoulder blades.
Thankfully, the rain appears to have abated somewhat. It was touch and go there for a while. It was nearly rafts we needed rather than buses. The economy, relying heavily as it does on the wave of tourists that wash up on our shores every year, could have been in trouble as a result.
Not that I was overly concerned. As always, I had a plan to turn muck into brass. Eco-tourism is fierce hip these days. And what better way of saving energy than self-propulsion.
Rather than ferrying punters around in coaches, canny operators could rip out a few back benches from their buses, lash them together with seat belts and, hey presto . . . green water rafting. They could even accentuate the Oirishness by spinning some yarns about retracing the wake of a mythical High Priest's great currach adventure, throwing in a few tales of wise swans, brave salmon, comely warriors and blood-thirsty maidens for the giggle.
Of course, care would have to be taken to ensure certain unscrupulous bottom-feeders didn't get greedy and start exceeding their quotas by wringing every last drop out of the tourists' wallets, thus depleting stocks. The last thing you want to do is bite the hand that feeds. Then we'd be up the creek without our paddles.
For it's not just the rafters who'd benefit - tourists need food, shelter, umbrellas, novelty hats, newspapers and other dross too. What it boils down to is spreading the profit around. I believe it's called trickle-down economics.