The Monday morning before last, I was seated at my desk in work with a cuppa tea counting the minutes down till I finished work (think I’d 120 of them to go, at the time) when my Boss (Eoghan) came through the door with a smile on his face. He sat down and relaid an interesting tale that put that smile on his face.
He’d been talking to a genealogist who’d been hired by Lyons Distillery to research Dublin’s St James Cemetery (Billionaire Pearse Lyons had bought the church at the front of the Cemetery and is in the process of converting it into a distillery) when the genealogist mentioned a demand the British Legion had made on Dublin City Council concerning their ex-servicemen’s tombstones.
The demand they’d made on Dublin City Council was that they clean up the tombstones of ex-servicemen of the British Legion (which the British Legion put there years ago) or remove them. On a visit to the Cemetery they’d been shocked by the rustic condition Dublin City Council had kept the graveyard in.
Dublin City Council bowed to their demand and instructed the Office of Public Works (OPW) to remove the tombstones. It can be surmised that on a subsequent visit to the Cemetery, members of the British Legion were knocked down by something lighter than what was used to remove their ex-servicemen’s headstones, as they expediently installed new headstones where the old ones once stood.
A couple of weeks ago I read of another request that went wrong for some other enquirer. A judge in Karachi, Pakistan questioned Abid Ali (a policeman with expertise in explosives) about the correct handling of explosives & how a grenade works. Officer Ali obliged the Judge by taking out a grenade and pulling the pin from it. His explanation came to an abrupt end as the grenade blew up in his hand. We are told he miraculously survived his own hapless demonstration along with two other policemen & a court clerk (who were also injured), but the courtroom is now in need of urgent repair & a new witness box.
Now I’d say in the future, the British Legion & the Judge in Karachi will be more mindful when making requests to others. They may even come to conclusion that somethings are better left unsaid as they view their respective repairs.
