Paddy Plant

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Paddy Plant is one of Ballyyahoo’s oldest residents.

At ninety-six he is a little bit deaf in his right ear and a little bit more deaf in his left ear, but despite that, he can hear amazingly well and is surprisingly fast on his feet.

In fact, if you asked anyone in Ballyyahoo they’d be very quick to tell you that there isn’t a single gurrier in the whole town that could outrun Paddy Plant in a downhill race to the Good Luck pier in Ballyyahoo.

Paddy is very proud of his running abilities and he’s also very proud of his good health.

So, he wouldn’t admit this in public, but once in a while usually during the first half of the first night of a half moon, Paddy suffers from a nasty old dose of jip in his hip.

On the days that his hip gives him jip, Paddy finds walking on the rocky lanes of Ballyyahoo a bit sore so he likes to cycle instead of walking.

He has a rusty old bike that he calls Trusty because according to Paddy, Trusty has never once, in all his long born days ever, ever, let him down.

That is unless you count that time when those two eejity little gurriers, Kevin and Gerry Mac decided to play a mean April Fools Day prank on Paddy.

One of the gurriers, Gerry Mac, took Trusty and hid it behind a steaming great pile of cow manure that was piled up high beside the cowshed.

In the end, they were the fools because when Paddy figured out what had happened to Trusty he not only went bonkers but he also went ballistic – double ballistic.

You’d never think it for a man of ninety-six but when Paddy Plant goes bonkers and double ballistic knees have been known to tremble as far as the dreaded, dreadful and dread-filled town of Ballyuseless.

He was just about to boot-propel the two eejits down the lane and back again when he had a brainwave.

Not just an ordinary brainwave but a Paddy brainwave and that’s about the brainiest brainwave full of the brainy ideas anyone could have.

So before they could escape, Paddy ear-marched the two young gurriers into the cowshed and made the two eejits spend the rest of April Fool’s day shovelling cow manure and wheelbarrowing it up to Seanie Kelly’s shop.

Paddy enjoyed watching them work while relaxing on his favourite home-made log seat and twiddling the hair in his ears.

By the end of that day, Paddy was a very happy man and he thanked his lucky stars that the two April fools had played their eejity trick on him.

You see, Seanie Kelly had been asking Paddy for a couple of barrows of cow manure for weeks and like many of the jobs that Paddy gets asked to do, he had put that job on not just one, but on two of his very long fingers.

Seanie’s vegetables are the finest in Ballyyahoo and that’s because Seanie uses a special and nutritious compost.

The compost is a mucky mixture of Paddy’s finest cow manure, Cori-the-hen woman’s chicken manure, and a special brew he makes from seaweed he collects daily from Biddy’s beach.

Biddy is also known as the witch of Ballyyahoo and she swears that Seanie’s cabbage would give you enough energy to fly to all the way to Wales and back if you ever took that kind of a notion.

Still, because of the jip in his hip, Paddy hadn’t got round to bringing the manure to Sean but he knew that once he had two strong young eejits to attached to his wheelbarrow the job would be done in no time, or at the very least, hardly any time.

April Fool’s day turned out to be a great day for Paddy altogether, because, in return for giving him all that cow manure, Seanie Kelly gave Paddy enough vegetables to keep him winning downhill races against gurriers for at least a month.

From that day on Paddy decided to hide his precious bike well away from the grasping hands of any more prank-playing young eejity gurriers that might mistake Paddy for a gobdaw and chance their arm at stealing his beloved Trusty again.

The best hiding place Paddy could think of was up the top of the highest tree in his garden.

Seanie’s cabbage gave Paddy all the extra energy he needed to lift Trusty with one arm, up over his head and high into the tree.

Still, Paddy needn’t have worried though because those particular two eejits were so tired after shovelling manure all day they vowed never to play a prank on old Paddy Plant ever again.

Mind you, since they were eejits they had forgotten all about their vow by the very next year!

But that’s a whole other story, so you’ll have to wait a while if you want to find out what happened, at least until April Fool’s day comes around again.

But don’t worry there are plenty more stories about Ballyyahoo and some of them have got Paddy Plant in them too.