Keane’s Kingdom

A madly-in-love man finds sweetness at last in his Easter egg error

THIS is the last sugary Easter. Next week there will be a sugar tax on sweet drinks. The dentists are up in arms, as they will lose a fortune due to the better teeth. Soon enough, Easter eggs will be low in sugar.

Too many Easter eggs are bad for us, as is too much of one Easter egg. And so we must tell you the Easter story of the giant Easter egg and the madly-in-love man.

Easter eggs have always been a source of temptation. I was but a small boy and Ireland was poor. We were corralled into the old convent church on Holy Thursday. There was this priest who preached that a man who was wicked enough to break the Lenten abstinence by the premature opening of an Easter egg before Easter Sunday was not to be trusted. Such a man was capable, he said, of having intimacies with the fiancée before they were married.

But no one touched the giant Easter egg in Moloney’s shop window. The newsagent is still there and going great under the friendly management of Dominic.

The egg in Moloney’s was big enough to hatch out a baby dinosaur and cost most of a week’s wages for those who weren’t on big pay but weren’t on small pay either.

The huge egg was embroidered with pink cornicing motifs and wrapped in golden paper. The egg was hand-made and someone said there were 11 gallons of milk gone in to it.

Rumour was the richest man in town had already paid for the egg for his missus, but this theory was discounted on the basis the richest man in town was too mean to spend so much on the missus.

And I know what you’re thinking. He wouldn’t be the richest man in town if he went around buying chocolate dinosaur eggs for herself.

I’m not forgetting the sugar tax, but as I’m writing this piece here early on Good Friday morning I might as well declare I will be opening up John B’s for the first time in 63 years.

Would my mam and dad have opened up? I don’t think so.

I’m lonesome after Good Friday. It’s a lovely family day with no need to check the bar or no waiting for some lunatic to come in.

My dad was more spiritual than religious but he did appreciate the sacrifice of Jesus, who was his hero.

I’m opening because there are people who will exercise their free choice to come in and have a drink. We are beginning to get a few tourists in and they are entitled to drink in an Irish pub.

Then there’s the till. It has been the toughest winter ever for pubs.

I will call to the church and kiss the cross, which is the custom around these parts.

I would like to remind those who commented on the fact I felt Irish women should consider not going to see the Pope, that it was the four or more women who stayed with Jesus in extremis on that first Good Friday. Most of the men were too scared to stick it out. But none of the Calvary four would be considered worthy of priesthood.

It was a tough call whether or not to open and let me offer my support, for whatever it’s worth, to the publicans of Newmarket in Co Cork, who decided to stay closed.

I have lovely cousins living in the town. Newmarket is a friendly place. We get our petrol in Hannons, who are old friends, and we brought every one of our newborns there on the way home from the hospital.

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) has advised publicans it is against the law to agree to close on Good Friday. To the CCPC, I would say there is surely some matter of more pressing consequence that might occupy your time.

It took a one-man crusade from Padraic Kissane to show up the banks for short-changing tracker mortgage customers. The CCPC has a role in making sure credit institutions do not agree to fix rates. Stick with that and leave the country pubs alone, not that even one of my friends would ever even consider agreeing with anyone to close on Good Friday.

John McGuinness made this comment in December 2017 to the CCPC: “So if each board of each bank made the same decision at the same time, that stinks of a cartel, and that’s what the Irish people believe and they believe the agencies of this State – that are there to protect – stood idly by from 2009 up until recently when this blew up.”

The CCPC agreed the banks acted “unscrupulously” in pushing some customers off their tracker mortgage contracts, but they were unable to prove there was a cartel.

THERE are some sensible laws. I’m all in favour of the tax on fizzy sweet drinks. And I was only joking about the dentists kicking up. The story of the largest and probably sweetest ever Easter egg must be finished. You might remember me telling you right back at the top of the page about the madly-in-love man and how it was he bought the T-Rex egg for his girlfriend.

He built her up with hints and winks for the big surprise. She was expecting an engagement ring on Easter Sunday morning even though they were only walking out for the bare seven years.

She smashed the egg over his head but apart from mild concussion, he suffered no other major physical symptoms.

I’m told she got sorry after and ate the egg. They were married three years later.

As late as late last night, I asked the madly-inlove man if he still brought herself eggs on Easter Sunday morning.

“I do, Billy,” he said. “Oh, I do for sure, but the Easter eggs are either boiled, fried or scrambled.”