Jerry O’Malley was thinking and so he could hold the thought he held his finger in the air in front of his face.

‘Jerry are you going to say something to help break this deadlock?’ the chairman asked.

Jerry kept his silence for the moment if he was to say something then the thought would be broken and lost.

The chairman waited and then cast his eye over the committee.

‘Does not one of you have an idea of what we could do for a big competition for the afternoon. There are any number of villages in the country that are able to organise a good clean competition that neither involves cows nor chickens and their backsides. We have been entrusted to deliver a festival worthy of the name, to draw in the crowds and send them home happy having spent their cash. And I’ll give you some of the ideas have the populist vote and notwithstanding the objections from some quarters I am sure that if we had the luck to be able to combine the mess that the lads ended up with in Ballycotten with a full house watching then we will have made our mark. But that was luck and that we can’t conjure.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen and Jerry it is time for pint and unless someone has anything else to add I propose that we all walk to down the hill.’

Jerry put down his finger and smiled. The chairman scowled. He was going to have to wait a few minutes more for his pint.

‘I have it now’ said Jerry. ‘We have had it the wrong way round. We have been debating the odds on when a chicken will lay its egg when what we should have been spending our time on is when that egg is hatched.’