DUBLIN

RECENT SUGGESTIONS THAT Russia might one day seize Shannon Airport have been met with the revelation that the Irish Defence Forces have a supremely cunning plan to deal with such an eventuality: they will strip the airport’s Duty Free shopping of everything but vodka and rely on that to at least slow any Russian advance, or perhaps stop it in its tracks.

“We’ve studied the mess they made trying to take Kharkiv by in 2022,” said an Irish Army officer involved in planning for improbable events. “We haven’t the ammunition to prevent an attack, but we do have buckets of duty free booze. We figure that if we leave it there for the taking and contain them within the airport perimeter until the Yanks, or even the French, arrive, they will be pissed out of their brains by day three. They will have run out of rations by then and what Russian is going to resist vodka when he’s starving? We were going to ask the Brits for help but we’ve studied their recent performances in Afghanistan and Iraq and frankly we’re not impressed. Look, they went hammer and tongs against the IRA for thirty years and had to sit down at the negotiating table with them. We nailed them in less than a year back in 1922 and 1923. The French Army is a better bet than the British now; and their rations are better. The Americans use Shannon anyway, have been doing it for years, so they’ll be happy to come to our assistance; and, of course, the ace up our sleeve is President Trump’s golf course just down the road at Doonbeg. He’s not going to Russian paratroopers pissing in his bunkers, is he?”