The news editor scowled the length of the newsroom towards the source of snoring. It was, he reflected, the silly season all right when one issue of this newspaper contained headlines such as " `Crash' may have been model plane," "NI youth nearly loses finger," "Thieves take 500 cooked hams," "Permission for hotel plan sought" and "New phone card celebrates games," this last being a particularly riveting item about the launch of a phonecard to celebrate 30 years of Community Games. Whoopee. Unleash the champagne darling. And that was a good day, when the news editor could put his feet upon on his desk, light a cigar and cackle with joy, for news had also come through from Meath that a pig had farrowed. The front page was booked, the pig's mother was interviewed, photographs were taken of the piglets, therapists discussed the problems which would have to be faced in a couple of years of emergent pigling sexuality, dieticians discussed at length the diets of both pig-mother and piglings, and a psychiatrist was commissioned to write a long and sympathetic article about the sense of exclusion pig-dads feel at such a time.
A contrary point of view was solicited from a feminist, who wrote a long and impassioned article on how there were no pig-creches and the sow had to remain in the sty while the hog wandered around the fields, propositioning young and impressionable female pigs, consorting at the trough with other male pigs, discussing female pig parts at sordid length before tottering back to the sty at midnight to a distraught woman-pig who was having trouble keeping order amongst the brawling infants.
Pig education
The news editor had set a team of education specialists to worry at length about the problems emerging within pig schools and pig universities, and progressive educationalists denounced the arbitrary, elitist and carnivoralist considerations of the human diet: the eggs-ham hurdle, as it is known.
Such a day, the news editor reflected, was enough to reduce him to tears of joy. Even the sporting pages could carry stories about the prospects for footballing and hurling pigs in the future. The property pages could dwell on sty-prices, and the medical correspondent could discuss the coma-inducing effects of piggy-washing time, headlined - "The Daze of Swine and Hoses." Our culinary expert could deal the potential for minced pork, under the title Ground Hog Day.
The next day, the news editor was in at seven in the morning, his brow furrowed, his complexion furrowed, his comely locks greying as he pondered the agency copy, while snoring still echoed from the diarist's corner. No pigs appeared to have been born. The lead item on the RTE news was that Radio Ireland had had no news that morning. Radio Ireland had reported that RTE had had no news, with the additional gripping item that had caused photographers to go scrambling for their cameras, for their hats with the press-cards stuck in the rims, and rush out to their cars - a ballpoint pen had been reported missing in the RTE newsroom.
But the photographers soon trooped back to their desks. The ballpoint pen story turned out to have been a hoax. Paper-clips answered the morning roll call. All notebooks were present. The news editor chewed his pen and cast his eye the length of the newsroom. The snoring continued.
Investigations
The polcorr was checking a report that the Government was about to install an extra desk in the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The environment correspondent was investigating allegations of a new pothole in Cavan. There was a red-hot tip that a two-teacher school in Achill was going to remain a two-teacher school, confirming reports carried the week before.
The weather eye was keeping a weather eye on the weather eye and finding that there was still, after all, some weather to keep a weather eye on.
The day went by, still with the sound of snoring from the Diary corner.
Crowds of journalists gathered at one point at a window to watch an airliner overhead, praying that it would crash. It did not. The news editor asked the air correspondent to investigate the appalling safe record of Dublin airport, and its complete absence of crashes. No story resulted.
Evening, and the newsless news editor was still at his desk glaring across the wastelands of infertility, and idly crumpling an assistant news editor in his hand. The economics correspondent was checking a report that Guinness might be opening or closing a small warehouse in Reykjavik. From France came news of a hosepipe ban in a village near Marseille. The report proved unfounded. Electricity briefly tingled across the newsroom when PA reported a bull running amok in Pamplona. The story was amended to a cow knocking over its milking pail in Portsmouth.
News at lastFrom the diary corner of the newsroom, there was a snoring sound. From the news editor's desk there was the sound of gibbering.
Hours passed by, as event-free as that vast aeon which preceded the Big Bang. Suddenly, and with a hard set face, the news editor was seen striding the length of the newsroom, a pistol in his hand, heading towards the snoring sound. He put the pistol to the diarist's head and pulled the trigger.
"My God!" screamed the Social Affairs Correspondent. "Are you mad? That's murder!" "No sir," whooped our Security Correspondent, briefly kissing the news editor on the lips. "That's a story."