The Minister for the Environment, Noel Dempsey, was humming a little carol from on top of the stepladder as he helped put up the Christmas decorations in the Fianna Fβil headquarters; but his brow was furrowed with worry.
For the Minister had a serious problem. The Labour leader, Ruairi Quinn, had said a rude word, and going back to his childhood days and Father O'Malley's stern lectures about vice and personal chastity in his childhood days, Noel realised that just thinking the word inwardly, without even saying it aloud, could be sinful.
Was he sinning now? This was the problem. He wasn't thinking the word, so that wasn't a sin, but he was thinking about the word, and this could be an occasion of sin, and deliberately not avoiding an occasion of sin was in itself sinful. So he'd have to confess that sin in the confessional, and he'd probably have to say the rude word to the priest, and the priest, poor fellow, would of course faint dead away in horror, his unconscious body slumping out of the confessional.
And then everyone would presume that he, Noel Dempsey, was a pervert, whose vices were so vile that he could only confess them to the Pope.
Thus abstracted, he began to hammer some Christmas bells into the cornice, and succeeded instead in driving a needle-pointed tack through his thumbnail, through the bone of this thumb, and several inches into the plaster and brickwork.
"Bother," he sighed, and as he recoiled in blinding agony, he accidentally kicked the stepladder from beneath his feet.
"Bless my soul"
Hanging six feet above the floor by his pinioned thumb, he mused aloud: "Upon my soul, that's jolly well torn it." For, in addition to driving a small metal stake through the bone marrow of his thumb, he had neatly exposed the nerve-ending which torturers use to break the will of their most stubborn guests. Furthermore, as he threshed around, he succeeded in dislocating his thumb, wrist and elbow, meanwhile tearing all the ligaments in his arm.
"Hello old fellow," remarked Martin Mansergh, the Taoiseach's Special Adviser on Art, Culture and Rude Words, as he walked in. "Golly. You appear to be in a bit of a pickle. Heavens above, all that blood." Crack! "Oops. Was that a bone I heard breaking?"
"It was, actually. My shin bone. I was just trying to kick myself off this wall, and I snapped it in two, damn it."
"Dash it"
"Language!" warned Martin. "There might be ladies about. When in doubt, say dash it."
He pointed to the shattered arm by which the Minister was dangling and observed rather shrewdly: "Must sting a bit, what?"
"Well do you know, the most amazing thing, but it jolly well does. Something rotten, actually."
There was another crack. "Crumbs," cried the Minister, "I do believe I've just broken my ribcage as well. Dear me, not my day, is it?"
"Apparently not. I'm told that having broken ribs is worse than childbirth."
"Crikey! How remarkably interesting. This feels like I'm giving birth to an engine block and a gearbox through my chest cavity. Ooops! There! I knew it! The tendons across my sternum have just been severed. This is simply rotten luck."
"Hello, hello, hello," intoned a cheery voice. "Making the most of the season after which you are named, what, Minister?"
"Ah, my beloved Taoiseach!" With an effort, Noel Dempsey snappily saluted his party leader with the arm by which he was suspended: it was a considerable athletic achievement, and the last one in the career of that particular limb. Moments later, it plopped out of its socket; with a tearing sound, the Minister parted company from his arm, falling to the ground and breaking his pelvis on impact.
Tutting with impatience, he tried to stand, but was instantly felled by the combined effects of his broken leg collapsing beneath him and being hit by a chunk of brickwork, which in all the excitement had broken free of the wall.
Recumbent, he ran the broken fingers of his remaining hand over his collection of sundry body parts.
"Well, this is a rum to-do, and no mistake," he lisped, before spitting out some shards of shattered teeth. "I appear to have fractured my nose and lost the sight of an eye."
There was a crash as a large painting of Sean Lemass, loosened by the events of the morning, plummeted down onto his broken form. "No," he corrected himself after another cursory examination. "Of both eyes. Well, well, well. Goodness gracious, what a funny old day it's been."
"Hard lines"
"Hard lines, Noel," sympathised S∅le de Valera as she entered the room. "Bags I your share of the Christmas turkey."
"It's not a turkey this year," Martin Mansergh declared. "I thought we'd go Mediterranean instead. We're having a big fat bustard instead."
Uttering a little shriek, S∅le de Valera swooned and fell through the floor. Feverishly blessing himself, the Taoiseach dropped to his knees and began to recite a decade of the Rosary; and poor brave Noel Dempsey, unable to stand such strong language, simply died of shock.