*Dedicated to the innocence/genius that is Paul Cassidy*

Air: Barbie Girl



Im a hardy boy in a hardy world
Life's fantastic, when im pallatic
Bate boys everywhere
Highlights in me hair
Listenin to Tiesto
In me Fiat Punto
Love wearin Fred Perry
Lushin back me Buckie

Chorus:
I'm so hardy, I'm so hardy
aww aww aww yeah
I'm so hardy, I'm so hardy
aww sham, aww sham

Im a hardy boy in a hardy world
Life's fantastic, when im pallatic
Go cruisin with Bobo
Wankin' out the window,
Cheatin' on me beure
Treatin' her like a whore,
Wearin' magnetic studs
Doin' loads of drugs
Yoked of me face -
Every night in Gray's!

I'm so hardy, I'm so hardy
aww aww aww yeah
I'm so hardy, I'm so hardy
aww sham, aww sham

I'm so hardy, I'm so hardy
aww aww aww yeah
I'm so hardy, I'm so hardy
aww sham, aww sham


(Sure say nattin,
And keep on sayin it,
Tell nobody,
Keep on tellin nobody,
Sure if anyone finds out........ we're FUCKED!!)

© Pauric Gill 2007

A young footballer has encountered many difficulties by the time he reaches the ranks of the minor grade. He has endured unknown verbal abuse from auld lads in their fifties living out their lives through the gossans. They have survived the horrors of puberty (some of them anyway) and now are talking the talk of the big man, even if all they’re still shaving on a Saturday night is bum fluff and they’ve got nowhere to go.
In the smaller clubs, you could be approached at age 15 to enter the murky world of minor footballer. As a 15 year old, you are in awe of these big hulking 17-18 year olds each with the very small beginnings of a beer belly. They talk about women in a way you wouldn’t hear on a German satellite channel and you move closer to pick up tips, even though you’ll have no guinea pigs to practise with for another couple of years and it’s debatable whether even they have practised such things either.
They are probably listening to such musical geniuses as Chimera, Slipknot, Slayer, Spineshank and Sepultura, while you are buried in your auld fellas’ 70s vinyl collection of Rory Gallagher, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd etc, and declaring that rock died when Kurt Cobain exited planet rock with a bang.
You see them walking moodily around the school, yelling abuse at teachers you’re still afraid of. You watch in frustration as the girls in your year, especially the one you fancy, almost throws herself at the six foot one midfielder. A rage builds inside of you that you can't let out till you're at home in your bedroom and your mammy wonders have you been drinking too much Ovaltine at night.
Does this sound like the screenplay of an American teen movie? It does to me. But has this story happened to you? Well, some people are blessed with all the right moves from the day you first see daylight, though it’ll comfort the rest of the pack that almost everybody got their arses clattered when just a few seconds outside the auld lassie by some monstrous midwife whose beard would be the envy of Ronnie Drew.
The star minor footballer is one that is respected by old and young alike. He is the great white hope of the parish, the fella who'll bring back the county title when he gets to senior grade, barring he gets lured by some ‘foreign’ soccer team from Dublin who then bounce him on to….(whisper it on a GAA lovers website…E n g l a n d).
Cue screams and howls of protests from the auld bucks at the counter who mutter to themselves that the pup was never any good and neither was his father. ‘Sure didn’t I go on the blanket for Ireland lad. That’s right, I camped out for JP2’s visit to Knock in 1979. What's wrong with the youth these days? If I said I was going to play pansy football in England to my father, God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Holy Ghost have mercy on him, he’d have taken me two legs off with a scythe and boiled them for the Christmas dinner. He always said to me never play 'Tan' football.’
So you have a lot to live up to. As you begin to go to the minor training sessions, a strange thing occurs. Those same lads that are eighteen or so, begin to recognise you at school and grunt a greeting towards you as you walk nervously past them down the corridor, waiting for the obligatory psycho that’s ready to pounce on you and drag you into an empty room for a ‘chat’. You remember that this same psycho lad used to come around to your house on a Saturday, while at national school, and you spent hundreds of hours defending your home made fort from imaginary Klingons or some such foreigners.
However, with the big lads noticing you, the ‘one’ begins to as well. She comes up and actually talks to you. Her eyelids start fluttering, the shy grin, and the fidgeting of the hair nearly makes you run for a bucket of water to cool down with. You stutter like a diesel car on a frosty morning as you talk about how the science teacher is such a bastard for having giving out to the

Roysh, this is the story all about how
My Dubes almost got ripped, turned inside out.
And I'd loike to take a minute, we’ll have a talk,
I’ll tell you how I became the Prince of a school called Blackrock.

In west Glenegeary, born and raised,
On the rugby pitch is where I spent most of my days…
Chillaxing out, abbreviating, looking all cool,
Wearing my brown Dubes in and out of school.

When a couple of skobes who were up to no good,
Started wearing Perrys in my neighbourhood.
They tried to start a fight, I got a bit of a shock,
I said “I’m moving with my rugger-bugger mates to Blackrock!”

The Old Dear begged and pleaded with me, day after day
But I packed my pink polos and went on my way.
She gave me a kiss and then a Dorsh ticket.
I put some James Blunt on and said I might as well kick it!

Top class mon, this aint bad LOL
Drinking ‘Stella out of a champagne glass!
OMG…that hippy looks loike, so fat.
Don’t let that minger sit beside this cool cat!!!

I whistled for my chauffer and when he came near,
The licence plate said Carlow and had dice on the mirror.
If anything I'd say I'd rather walk,
But I said WHATEVER! I’m home to Blackrock!!!

I pulled up to the school around 7 or 8
And I yelled to the chauffer “cheers mon, later!”
Looked at all the Dubes - couldn’t ask for more,
To sit on my throne as the Prince of D4

Gill ©2006