TIPPERARY MUSINGS: If you hit a lamp post, you should go to court in style

There is an art in appearing in court known to frequent flouters of the law but to achieve their courtroom experience you would have to be either an arch criminal or a masochist who spent half his time in courtrooms.

Taking it, therefore, that you are a first offender, let me caution that going to court is not fun; it is a highly expensive hobby to be indulged in by barristers, solicitors, judges and court reporters -all of whom make money out of our misery.

So, if you, like me are only an ordinary working man I should strongly advise staying out of court.

Unless of course the legal profession cannot function without your assistance, as when you are a defendant in a case of Assault and Battery to a lamp post that had the nerve to stand in your way and hit you first, and you returning nice and peaceful like from your local!

A legal machine gets into full swing from the moment a garda insists that it was you (using a brick) who battered the lamp post before it retaliated and gave you a whacko on the nose.

If the morning after the assault, you can remember a blue uniformed person leading you gently away to a place of confinement with steel bars to protect you against further assaults from lamp posts then you should await a summons…

When a grim-faced gent or lassie in blue in a patrol car screeches to a halt outside your door, think immediately of the neighbours (And the daughter a nun in America) and roar all over the street: “Ah, hello, Garda Mor-I –Ar-Eye-Tee!

Have you the minutes of the last meeting? Garda M is probably secretary of the hurling club of which you are treasurer.

If he is a decent man ( and I have known many a decent Guard) he will smile and shout back that he has the minutes and will give you same in the kitchen and can he come in, and, of course, he can.

Over a cup of tay you will be the personification of an apology and suggest that the Town Council had better do something about that violent street –lamp before somebody more violent than you uses a keg of dynamite on it… Then accept the summons with dignity.

But, in the final analysis, you are fooling nobody, and the town knows by now that bad will out and that ‘tis aisy known as all before you and belonging to you were the world’s worst for kicking and hurtling stones at lamp posts in the oscillated and ossified state.

You will get no peace in the matter, and the most humiliating aspect of the whole thing is that the boozing buddies down at the local will mock you to death for not being able to hold your drink like a man.

In court, you should be shining and respectable in your Sunday or Marriage suit and a Pioneer Pin on the lapel would not be out of place.

Read the New York Times (Sunday Edition) to pass the time away for your case to come up in court and console the fellow who drove like he was in a hurry to get to China in 90 minutes flat, and who sees prison bars all over the courtroom.

At least you won’t end up in The Joy.

You are summoned before a Justice who looks usually as if he has lost all faith in humanity. But not to be squeamish.

Give the judge a “sorry, but I’m here for the first and last time” look.

Make a mental note to cancel your subscription to the weekly newspaper whose representative will eye you up scrutinisingly to ascertain if you are the type of character who might be worth some lineage to the Sunday Notorious or who is only a midget who shall be used as a filler between the chess and folk music columns of the ‘paper.

Of course, you are made aware of the gravity of the offence by the judge who hopes, like you, that ye shall never meet again!

You are fined €40 (a lot of booze money), and you leave the courtroom shaking and shrinking in soul.

You repair to the nearest hostelry for consolation and hope you do not meet that contrarylamp post on the way home, or you will make a flaming hames of it.

And swing for it if you have to!Then you pray that this is the Partner’s Bingo Night and that she will win that bleddy snowball.

Otherwise, even Mountjoy Jail will be heaven to what you’’ll have to endure.