The Four Marys

Decades ago, there was a series of books written by Enid Blyton, chronicling the adventures of the Four Marys, four girls at middle-class English boarding school who got up to all sorts of hair raising adventures. Unlike today and probably in real life then as well, there were no drugs or sex involved – just crazy episodes like midnight picnics and episodes of solving some very complex mysteries.
In Ireland, in the reformatory school known as the Government, we have our own Four Marys - Coughlan, Hanafin, Harney and Wallace. In years to come no doubt, books will be written about them but at this stage the content and tone of those books is unknown, other than it will not be kind.
First of all, we have city slicker Mary Hanafin, who comes from a Fianna Fail dynasty of political heavyweights who because they were too heavy to stand, sat on their arse for generations doing nothing. One day Thin Mary, as she is called, will probably grow up to be a teacher for she has all the attributes for the job. For now, she is not even the head prefect much to her annoyance as she feels superior to the other Marys and wastes little opportunity in letting them know it. Preaching down to others in a superior South Dublin manner is a dominating characteristic. She dresses in prim outfits that clearly indicate her future calling, though of course they are designer label. She dismisses any talk of boys that seem to be the main conversation of her classmates. She cringes at the sight of a drawing of a penis in biology class as all the other girls giggle. When she learns that this yoke can enlarge and will want to penetrate her vagina, she gets sick and vows to be a virgin for the rest of her life.
Then we have head prefect, Mary Coughlan from Donegal, the real culchie in the quartet. Known as Thick Mary, she is also the most dim-witted and constantly fails to perform in crucial exams. Her teachers are worried about what will become of her when she goes out into the real world. In an effort to bring her up to scratch with the rest of the class, they made her prefect much to the annoyance of other better-qualified candidates in the class. It appears to be of little success as she is still prone to cringe-inducing gaffes. This being Dublin in 2009 and not England in the 1970s, the other girls are no innocents abroad. They openly accuse Mary of giving blows-jobs to the headmaster, as they contend with much justification that there is no other way she would have got the job. Mary, who dresses in a weird collection of homespun garments from the cottages of Donegal, has as much sex appeal as Nell Mc Cafferty in the nude, claims she hasn’t got a notion of what a blowjob is and said that the headmaster only asked her to crawl in under his desk to find his pencil.
Fat Mary Harney is third in the pecking order. A fat, cruel and deceitful girl, she knows all about blowjobs. She gets them when on holidays in America with her family. Luckily, they pay for them at $400 a pop or she would never know any sexual intimacy. Mary is a curiously unattractive girl, not unlike a giant version of the penguin that appears in the Guinness ad. Like the penguin who seeks the pub that serves Guinness and overcomes the dangerous obstacles to get there, she goes through a hysterical series of mishaps while attempting to achieve her goal at school. Eventually, like the penguin, which arrives at the pub only to find that he has no money to pay for the pints, Mary prepares so diligently for the exam only to show up on the day with no pencil. Angrily she grabs a pencil from another girl and tells her to fuck off when the classmate pleads that she will die if she cannot do her exam. Fat Mary is devoid of compassion and will do anything underhand to get her way no matter the cost to others in less fortunate positions.

Mary “Dope” Wallace is the fourth Mary. She is fat and ugly with a very low IQ and is in the special needs section of the class. She is from County Meath. Enough said!

God help Ireland if the Four Marys leave school and go into politics!