Humble consolations of never being a star

Country Living with Francis Farragher

It’ll come as no great surprise to the masses that I’ve decided to rule myself out of all future US presidential elections, after much soul searching and deliberation.

A series of slightly eccentric medical complaints down through the years would have held me up to ridicule among my peers, while a nagging old cough – that probably won’t kill me, but won’t go away either – would certainly scuttle my chances of making it to the Oval Office.

It sure is one serious bit of business to be elected as President of the United States, and I’d say, apart from God Himself, no citizen of human frailty could pass all the health tests and trawls of past deeds from birth to old age.

Probably the most bizarre defence of all as regards having a puff of marijuana came from Bill Clinton when he said that while he had ‘experimented’ with the drug for a time in his college days, he hadn’t inhaled. Now Bill, you didn’t really expect us to believe that one.

Already I’d have to admit taking a drag of some rolled up weed in the Cellar Bar back in the late 1970s but for the life of me, I cannot recall getting any kind of kick out of it, other than the usual splutter of a cough.

So if I was a Bill Clinton, my excuse would be that while I did experiment once or twice with something that might have been cannabis, I got no enjoyment whatsoever from it. That should be okay with the American tabloids.

I don’t think though that I’d have to confess to two shots of ‘something’ that I got after a knee cartilage clean-out a few years back in one of the local hospitals.

Whatever it was, it sure was brilliant, as for the following four hours or so, I fell totally in love with the world and wouldn’t hear a bad word said about anyone.

The temptation was there to get the second knee done on the spot . . . but the feeling passed, even if the memory does linger on.

Possibly that could rule me out of the US presidential race, as I certainly ‘enjoyed to the last’ the little substance that entered by system, but I’ve decided to drop its pursuit in light of further enquiries.

A medical guru told me ‘to forget about that stuff’ as, in all probability, the next time I’d be getting a shot of it, the angels and their entourage would be waiting in the next room. So down with that kind of thing . . . but like the small pig, it was nice while it lasted.

Read Francis Farragher’s column in full in this week’s Connacht Tribune.