Dizziness Day in Ballykillduff

Dizziness Day in Ballykillduff
By Gerrard Wilson (probably)

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It all began, quite understandably, with a wobble.

Not a big wobble. Just a small, curious one. A sheep wobbled first (Sean the Ram, to be precise), then the postman, then the clock tower, then the actual postbox, which spun on its little metal leg and flung out a bundle of letters like confetti at a particularly disorganised wedding.

“Hmm,” said Mrs McFadden, blinking three times in succession, which was her emergency response to any anomaly. “Must be Dizziness Day again.”

“Dizziness Day?” asked young Nora O’Brannigan, who had just staggered out of the Ballykillduff Bakery with a baguette she no longer seemed entirely certain how to hold. “Is that a real thing?”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs McFadden, gripping the lamppost with the same determination she once reserved for snatching the last tin of condensed milk during the War. “It comes round every seven years or so, like a bad penny or your Uncle Dermot after two shandies. No one knows why. The ground just starts to spin like the teacups at Clonakilty Fair, and everyone gets rather… bendy.”

Sure enough, the entire village had begun to list gently to one side. The pub sign swung in slow, exaggerated circles. Mr O’Shaughnessy the butcher was staggering in figure-eights around a pyramid of sausages. The church steeple bowed slightly to the left and politely nodded at the chemist’s shop.

Even the birds were flying in loops. Dizzy loops.

“I blame the ley lines,” said Farmer Doherty, walking at a 45-degree angle across the green, one boot inexplicably filled with milk. “Or perhaps the cheese fumes from that Frenchman who moved into the old library.”

The Frenchman in question, Monsieur Brie, was attempting to hold a wheel of particularly stinky Roquefort over his head like a trophy. “Zis is not my fault!” he shouted, before spinning dramatically into a hedge.

By 11:27 a.m., all of Ballykillduff was officially wobbly. The pub had renamed itself The Spinning Sporran. The schoolchildren were given the day off after Miss Kavanagh, the headmistress, mistook her own umbrella for a pupil and scolded it for chewing gum.

Father Finnegan tried to give a sermon but only managed three sentences before he fell backwards into the baptismal font, muttering something about vertigo and fish fingers.

The town council, having anticipated this day (they had a special velvet-lined box labelled “Open Only on Dizziness Day”), convened at the duck pond. Councillor McGroggin opened the box and removed a large rubber chicken, a pair of goggles, and the Official Anti-Spin Beacon (a large traffic cone painted gold).

Placing the beacon atop the fountain, he bellowed, “LET BALYKILLDUFF BE STILL!”

Nothing happened, of course. But a duck applauded.

By 3:00 p.m., people had stopped fighting the dizziness and started embracing it. Children held Dizziness Races (first to fall over won). Teenagers took selfies upside down. The elderly sat in deckchairs and heckled anyone who tried to walk in a straight line.

At exactly sunset, as the church bell wobbled into a hesitant chime and the sun slipped drunkenly behind the Ballykillduff hills, everything suddenly… stopped.

The birds flew straight again. The pub stopped rotating. Mr O’Shaughnessy was found asleep in a box of mince.

The villagers all exhaled in unison and stood in silence.

Then Mrs McFadden said, “Well. That was a nice one. Much better than the Dizziness Day of ’93, when the cows learned to moonwalk.”

And everyone agreed.

Because in Ballykillduff, if you’re going to have a day where the world spins for no reason, you might as well enjoy it.