Goodbye and good riddance to August, that most wicked of months …

By Tony Galvin

EDNA O’Brien was right: August is indeed a wicked month for most people — but it’s hell for hacks. Now I’m not trying to rehabilitate the hussy from Clare. To my mind, as the nuns might have told her, she did indeed disgrace her county, her country — and worst of all, herself — by writing those dirty books. It was a sad day for this country when the ban on such books was lifted — the resulting tide of debauchery, licentiousness and fornication that has flooded in ever since has been the ruin of us.
Bring back censorship, I say. We’ve lost out on so much by not having to surreptitiously pass banned books to each other. Back then we knew what sin was and if we didn’t, the dog-eared pages and sweat-darkened passages soon informed us.
Not that it made a lot of difference to the likes of me. Plodding through a tome such as the aforementioned Edna’s Country Girls left this poor Mayo lad more bewildered than enlightened as to the secrets of you know what.

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