I promised myself that I wouldn’t write about The Rose Of Tralee this year.

But then, I also promised myself that I’d uncover the meaning behind that strange graffiti in the jacks of An Cruiscin Lan, and that never happened. I let myself down more times than a suicidal tyre, me.

See, this year, blurb suggested that the Roses would be independent, successful, and much more firm in personal conviction and modern morals than in boob and thigh. Which didn’t fool anyone, but bless the organisers for trying to put the spin in spinsters … actually, not so much so anymore, what with young mums being permitted to parade all pretty this year. So long as they’re not married. Fertile spinsters? I digress.

What I was intrigued by was how the Roses were set to display more interesting party pieces than Wilted Roses of yore; one Rose, for example, had a snake (although how it’s a talent to walk into a petshop and go, “Hey, gizza snake” is beyond me). There would be no more getting Ray D’Arcy to hold the shoes while various Roses did the Easy Reel in their Pretty Pollies! Oh no, not in 2009! There would be no rat-a-tat-a-patter of amateur poetry renditions …

“I like Ireland, it is green
And lovely sights are on it seen.
I like Ireland, nice and bright
The Escorts spit-roast me last night”

… no yoddling of tunes composed by poor dead Grandad, and no daft tin fucking whistle solos accompanied by enthusiastic clapping such as one might find at a Nolan Sisters benefit gig for epil-fucking-eptics.

Jaysus. Forgive me. I got slightly carried away there. It’s just that I have a pathological hatred of tin whistles, perhaps because it’s the one instrument you’re coerced into learning at school as a malleable Irish youngster, when you really would be better off developing piano-playing skills, or learning how to strum on a guitar, or, y’know, on anything else that might actually be defined as a genuine musical instrument and not some sort of castrated flute (and yes, you may bear in mind the alternative definition of “flute” in Ireland). What good is a tin whistle, now that all the vacancies in The Pogues have been filled (until Shane MacGowan finally dissolves away, anyway)? What joy is in some red-faced plank diddly-idling her way into fourteenth place in a beauty pageant that’s not “about” beauty? Tin whistles sound like songbirds played backwards by paranoid Christian ornithologists, all gathered around the stylus, dragging it ever backwards into canary songs, waiting for the Dark Master to trill something about strippers … where was I?

Oh yes. I was most gratified to learn that there would be none of the traditional party-pieces from 2009’s Lovely Girls, for even though I wouldn’t be watching it (indeed, there would be more chance of me watching OAPs deserting a safety-moored car ferry and calling it a jolly diversion), I would dread to believe that there would be tin whistle solos going on anywhere that my licence fee had been. Good on you, Rose of Tralee Festival, thought I, for encouraging modern Irish daughters to think outside of rhymes and ballads and primary-school-level jigs. Having a snake in your handbag may not be the most graceful of traits (Exhibit A: Lorena Bobbit), but it’s a move forward from red-cheeked, misty-eyed tootling on Lucifer’s hollow rod.

Then, amused by the live-blogging and rabid tweeting going on during the TV final, I flicked onto RTE to see what I could see.

What do you think I saw?

Ah no. I won’t tell you. You can guess. Here’s a clue: it involved outdated paddyfuckery of the shitest order, tone deaf bints in tulle, and a castrated fucking flute spit-polished til you could see your own fucking scrubbed-fresh freckles in.

Utter, utter cunts.

Have a slightly less crazy weekend, kids.