Emerald Bile

St Patrick is not actually my favourite saint, my favourite Saints are the ones to do with physical problems - St Lucy, the patron saint of styes on the eye and St Blaise, patron saint of throat diseases. What useful saints they are. However, I do have very great respect for the Patron Saint himself, as he drove away snakes from Ireland, and I fucking despise snakes.

I've heard people giving out: "St Patrick did not actually drive the snakes away, the ice age did it". Fuck away off with the ice age, you jealous, snake-riddled nations. St Patrick got rid of the snakes and that is that. Are there snakes in the world? Yes there are. Are there snakes in Ireland? No. So it isn't because of the ice age, is it! It's because of the holiness.

Across the Irish Sea, St George, Patron Saint of England, got rid of dragons from England. If there were still dragons (not Komodo ones, they are not dragons, they are lizards) in other parts of the world, then I would absolutely think: "Well done, St George. Fair play to you, for getting rid of the dragons out of England". It would be especially impressive if there were still dragons in Wales and Scotland but these lumbering, terrifying creatures were unable to cross the Severn Bridge, or go over Hadrians wall without combusting. However, I don't think there ever were dragons in England, or indeed anywhere in the world. Now I'm not saying St George was a lying shite and made up a dragon that he had driven out. No, I think he did have a go at driving out cold blooded animals but I think rather than mythical dragons, he focussed his driving out powers onto newts and then there was a spin put on his achievements by the media.

Whatever the size of the creature he destroyed, St George was clearly not as efficent at his job as St Patrick, as newts remain in England to this day. I'll hand it to St George that he reduced their number - newts are now an endangered species, but he didn't sucessfully rid the country of them, nor did he leave a legacy of people who were going to take up the baton after his death by finishing off his work and getting rid of the rest of the newt population.

In fact, where I live in England, there are several groups of bossy people in sturdy shoes, who make it their business to poke around in damp wells and springs, hunting for newts and taking pictures of them, and getting incensed when people want to build houses, or dig lakes near the newts and they start on, protesting and making picket lines and hollering: "What about the newts!" Recently in the local paper there was a four page spread, explaining how newts are as fussy about shagging and eating as pandas, and so it is, therefore, our national duty to nurture newts, and to make sure they have absolute silence and darkness and privacy to copulate in, and no children must disturb them ever. And there have been groups of people gathering in the evenings, discussing whether, as well as maintaining a utopia for newts, we should also draw pictures of newts at the top of all municipal documents and put a newt on a flag and so on and so on - you know what the English are like.

No, St George did not do a particularly good job at pest control, especially compared to his highly efficent, holy neighbour St Patrick, and that is the real reason for his fete not being a public holiday in England. Don't say that to anyone English though, or they will cut you.
Noreen