marval

I still love the Irish.

'My long lost brother is returning on Sunday. I haven't seen him since he left Ireland thirty years ago,' said Mick. 'He wrote to say he'll be arriving at Shannon airport at eight in the morning.'

'If he's been away that long,' asked Sean, 'how will you recognise him?'

'I won't,' reasoned Mick.

'But he'll recognise me cos I've never been away at all.

As the Reagan twins sat watching TV, on screen came the Tour de France cycle race.

'Why do they do that?' asked Paul.

'Do what?' said Peter.

'Cycle for miles and miles, up hill, down dale. week after week, day after day. Through wind, rain, snow, ice. Why do they continually torture themselves?'

'It's because,' said Peter, 'the winner gets half a million pounds.'

'Yes,' replied Paul. 'But why do the others do it?'

Mick Flaherty had supped more Guinness than enough and had stumbled out of Quinn's bar and into the Sunday afternoon air.

As his drunken eyes squinted to adjust to the light, an ambulance went by at great speed.

Blue lights flashing and siren blaring, it roared up the street with Mick in full flight running after it.

A hundred yards, 200, 300, almost a quarter of a mile he tracked it until suddenly, lungs and legs giving out, he fell into the gutter.

Then with his very last ounce of breath he roared: 'You can keep your damned ice cream.'

Murphy lay in hospital covered in bandages head to foot - with just two little slits for his eyes.

'What happened to you?' asked Cassidy.

'I staggered out of the pub and a lorry hit me a glancing blow and knocked me through a plate glass window.'

'Begod,' said Cassidy. 'It's a good job you were wearing those bandages or you'd have been cut to ribbons!'

A wee Irish boy came home from school in tears.

'What's the matter, son?' asked his mammy.

'We were doing sums today, Mammy,' he said.

'And were they too hard?'

'Well, the teacher said either I couldn't count, or I was stupid, or all three.'

Two Irish men met on a bridge.

'Have you seen Kevin recently?' asked Pat.

'I have and I haven't,' said Seamus.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I was walking down the road when I saw this fella who I thought was Kevin, and he saw a fella who he thought was me.

'But when we got closer it was neither of us.'

13:57 Fri 15th Jun 2012