Don’t worry if your beer is green on Friday

MY COMPUTER’S calendar reminds me that Friday is St Patrick’s Day. This is nice to know, and I shall certainly be celebrating the event enthusiastically with my Irish friends, as I tend to do every year. I can’t help wondering, though, why the computer bothers with one particular saint and not others? It was not designed or manufactured in Ireland.

It doesn’t tell me when it is St Andrew’s Day or St David’s Day, although these are the patron saints of Scotland and Wales. It does not mention when St George’s Day is, although he (if he ever existed) is the patron saint of England.

But every year my computer reminds me that March 17 is St Patrick’s Day. Maybe there’s a little Irish gremlin built into the circuitry.

I wonder whether there’s a patron saint of South Africa? If so he (or she) keeps a very low profile.

Apparently, St Patrick was captured by Irish pirates as a teenager and sold as a slave to work as a shepherd in Ireland. This doesn’t sound like a terribly hard life for a slave. Some of my best friends are shepherds and actually seem to enjoy the job.

He later escaped to England and studied religion, then returned to Ireland to convert the druids to Christianity.

Somewhere along the story he is reputed to have chased all the snakes out of Ireland, which is apparently why there are no snakes there today.

I have a sneaking suspicion he merely improved the quality of Irish whiskey to the point where nobody saw snakes any longer. I may be wrong.

I have never been to Ireland, but I do believe snakes are as scarce there as honest politicians are in South Africa.

(I wonder whether St George chased all the dragons out of England? This part of his story is never mentioned, but you never see any dragons there today.)

Anyway, I reckon St Patrick’s Day is the merriest of saints’ feasts and I always celebrate it enthusiastically with a great deal of singing, music and Guinness. I believe the event is celebrated with great gusto in New York, where pubs traditionally serve green beer on St Patrick’s Day.

I tried making green beer one year, but it was never a great success. Maybe I used the wrong breed of shamrock in my brew. The leeks in my Welsh beer were not a great success, either.

This year St Patrick’s Day day conveniently falls on a Friday, which gives us the whole of Saturday to repent for our religious enthusiasm.

Last Laugh

PADDY and Mike went into a posh restaurant and ordered two pints of Guinness. When their drinks arrived they took out their lunch boxes and started to eat the sandwiches they had brought.

The manager come bustling over and said to them: “Excuse me, but you are not allowed to eat your own food in here.”

Mike and Paddy looked at each other, shrugged and exchanged lunch boxes.