Several thousand people were left disappointed in Knock yesterday after gathering there on the word of a 14 year-old boy who promised the Virgin Mary would appear to them.
The quasi-magical matriarch of the Christian faith was scheduled to make her appearance at 3pm. Her planned apparition was one of the main legs on an extensive world tour which has already seen her make appearances to believers in, amongst other places, a cave in provincial Spain; a geography’s teachers greenhouse; a discarded bowl of porridge and in an ultrasound of a pregnant beagle.
Yet despite the significant hype that had built up around the event, the scheduled time of her arrival came and went.
“This is ludicrous,” said Bridget Chastity, one of the thousands who went to Knock expecting to get in a visual slice of that sweet, sweet Christian mirage, “I was at that Axl Rose gig in the O2 a couple of years ago when he didn’t turn up for like 2 hours, although, admittedly in that instance, I turned out to be even more disappointed by him when he did eventually turn up, but we’ve been sat here for hours. Where is she?”
When questioned about her failure no-show at one of the most important public appearances on her tour, Mary- who I dare say arrogantly insisted that I call her ‘Our Lady’ for the duration of our chat, despite the fact that there were only two of us in the room- seemed coy.
“Well, I was en route to Knock,” she began, “I stopped at a petrol station and got talking to this lovely fellow called Brian. He was filling up an ’06 Honda Accord if I remember correctly; we hit it off and, well, let’s just say that I may have to get my business cards reprinted to just read ‘Mary’.”
When I questioned why she would’ve had prefixed her name on her business cards with ‘Virgin’ in the first place, she said that she would see to it that my soul suffered eternal damnation in the fiery bowels of hell for my insolence.
Organisers- a 14 year old boy- are looking into reorganising the event at Knock, as well as editing any, now obsolete, ‘Virgin Mary’ branded merchandise.