The Priest wanders off t'wards the table, and himself beside me all quiverin' round the jowls.

"I'm hopin' it's some kinda boil, is all. Something can be solved with little more than a Brillo pad and a bucket o' boiling milk."

Me shrugging, and reaching for the door.

The bathroom's empty save for a vagrant fell asleep in a cubicle, burnt-out cigarette hanging from his mouth and a bottle o' gin on the tiles tween his feet. Little chance of him stirrin' this side o' November, and so the fella unbuttons the tweeds and bends over.

"Can you see?" he's asking.

Kinda fear could melt a Viking's teeth screeches 'long the folds o' my guts.

"Can you see?"

Mother Mary and the Blessed Balls o' Job, I see alright.

Right there on his arse, the very image of Ann Coulter.

Students of medicine will tell you this isn't altogether unheard of. Last July an x-ray revealed that the stomach cramps afflicting a middle-aged woman from the Shetland Isles was caused by a tiny Bill O'Reilly done formed 'longside her kidneys.

A poor bastard from Beverly Hills shot himself in the teeth when his right testicle took on the characteristics of Sean Hannity.

A civil servant from Kildare ended up on life support on account of a rogue Rush Limbaugh developed in his bladder.

Still, nothing prepares a fella for the sight of Anne Coulter growing out a stranger's arse.

The Priest was quick to act.

"Burn the fucker! Burn the very marrow out his bones lest this vile witchery destroy us all!"

But no.

A fella doesn't wander the grot-dens and voodoo parlors for long 'fore he encounters a lady or two might know how best to deal with this kind of ailment.

I know a woman might be able to help us, I announce, woman by the name of Martha Delaney, has a caravan on the coast road, I saw her cure arthritis once wi' nothing more than a budgie and a crack-pipe. I'd wager half my balls she'll know exactly how to go about fixing this whole deranged affair.

Turns out she didn't, but a friend of hers, a PR Consultant works for a solicitor in Belfast, she did.

"I've seen this before", the PR Consultant announced when we tracked her down. "Saw a fella at a Phil Collins gig cut Jerry Falwell out his gums one time." She took a drag from her cigarette. "You don't need to do that though. There are other ways."

The "other ways" amounted to "one way", a complicated procedure involving a cheese-grater, a couple fish and a bin-fulla vipers, to be set alight.

"You need to take the ash from the vipers", she continued, "and have a Priest rub it into your arse."

Thus, I find myself waking up in the opening paragraph with the weeping and the burning and the stench o' roasted snakes.