Sexed semen and hen parties

First, I thought it was an April fool’s joke.

On Saturday morning, April 1st, I was half listening to a farming programme, on the radio. They were discussing ‘Sexed Semen.’

Now, I know nothing at all about farming so this is my townie’s explanation of it.

Dairy farmers much prefer if female calves are born to their cows. This is because these will grow up to produce milk and calves. In order to impregnate cows, farmers buy semen. This is inserted into the cows. ‘Sexed Semen’ has been now been developed.

Here is the official explanation. “Sexed Semen selectively destroys sperm cells carrying the undesired chromosome. With about 90% accuracy, sexed semen allows farmers to effectively choose a bull or heifer calf.”

As I’ve already said, I decided that this was an April fool’s joke. Much to my surprise it is not. And what came immediately to my mind - and I’m sure to your mind too - is that if bull’s semen can be altered to determine the sex of a calf, it’ll be no time at all before human semen can be altered also.

How Mother Nature/God got the balance right between male and female births has always fascinated me. Every year, in school, when we looked at the intake of junior Infant children, we (almost) always had half and half boys and girls. This is good!

I do realise that parents, sometimes, long to have a male or female baby. A friend of mine, whose father owned a big farm, is one of ten girls. No boy was born to them. I know a woman, aged only 37, who gave birth to her seventh son at Christmas. The eldest boy is twelve. She is determined to have a daughter and will ‘go again’ as they say! Sexed semen for humans will alter much. I bet we’ll hear more about this.

On to hen parties now. One morning, recently, I was walking along by the guards’ barracks. I saw a group of women coming down Pearse Street. One was wearing a veil so I knew that they were a hen party. They stopped me, and a girl said she wanted to ask me a question. “Do you know where I could get a car that would take me to The Hodson Bay Hotel? I can pay.” “Do you mean a taxi?” I replied. When I said this all the girls cheered and clapped and told her she was marvellous. I stood, wondering what on earth was going on. It transpired that they were playing a game. This consisted of asking a stranger a question, not using the obvious word (in this case ‘taxi.’) The girl was being praised because she managed to do so. I walked up Pearse Street, mildly amused!

On a train home from Dublin, lately, a woman my age got into chat with me. Her three sons, aged in their mid-forties, are married to sensible girls, she told me. She doesn’t remember ever hearing about hen parties.

When this woman was 43 she gave birth to a daughter, who is now 29. This ‘drama-queen’ is getting married next year and was planning a hen party to beat all parties, the following weekend. Her poor quiet mother was worn out with it all.

“She insists that I come and insists that I have a new outfit for each day. I told her that the nice dress I got for Seamus’s wedding would be grand, but no, I must buy two new ‘modern’ outfits, she said.”

This woman, called Mary, told me that 30 of them will go on the train to Galway. They’ll be drinking champagne on the journey, to get into the mood. Then there will be ‘the parade.’ Like me, she had never heard of this. The 30 of them must ‘parade’ down Shop Street in Galway, led by the bride, in her veil and sash. Mary told me that she said maybe she’d drop into Anthony Ryan’s drapery shop, but her daughter ate her and insisted that she must be part of the ‘parade.’ After lunch in their hotel they will have cocktail-making-lesson.

“Cocktail lessons!” Mary said to me. “When am I ever going to be making cocktails?”

After these lessons they’ll drink the cocktails, get dressed in all their new style and hit the town, eventually ending up in a night-club. Mary told me that she is absolutely dreading it all.

The next day they must wear their second new outfits and go to lunch on a boat, which will take them on a tour of Lough Corrib.

Her daughter and pals have had fake tan applied, nails painted and hair done. They’ve bought boxes of ‘rude objects,’ Mary told me and why they are including her she had no idea. “What I’m wondering is,” she sighed, “If there’s all this fuss about her hen party, how will I survive her wedding?” How indeed!

The Joke Shop in Church Street, here in Athlone, does a roaring trade in supplying objects and outfits for these hen parties. Every day they post 100 boxes full of all sorts, to all parts of Ireland. On their web site jokeshop.ie you can see what they offer for sale. You’ll be amazed!

Theme costumes for each person attending can be purchased. All the women can go to the hen party dressed as gangsters, nurses or sailors. Other themes can be burlesque, the Grease movie, or police.

I wish Barry Kenna well, in his Joke Shop. He is an Athlone man running a thriving business in Church Street.