Be careful what you wish for, says the ‘always on’ man over in France

I AM in France this week for the midterm break with the family and so I am writing this slightly begrudgingly on a cloudy morning about an hour north of the Spanish border.

It was my intention to submit this column before I left, but if I have any self-knowledge after nearly half a century on planet Earth, it is that ‘past Colm’ has very little regard for ‘future Colm’.

Future Colm can figure it out because, quite frankly, past Colm has plans for the evening, thank you very much! Another thing I have learnt is that, in many ways, we never learn.

L’Occitanie is a region we have been visiting for over 20 years and the possibility of doing any meaningful work from here when we first started to visit was very slim.

You’d need to track down an internet café, which was the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail at times, often having to subject yourself to the indignity of Asking The Locals Some Questions In French, which is the last thing any of us come to France to do, let’s be honest about it.

I hope that one day I will converse with the locals fluently and fulfil the promise of my honours Leaving Cert French result, but please God not yet.

So, for many years, I pined for the possibility of being able to work from here somehow – how ideal would it be, I thought, to enjoy the privilege of the weather and the local scenery and cuisine, while logging in occasionally and keep work ticking over as well?

Unfortunately, all these dreams have now come true, and I sit here on the terrace after a night of rain, writing words for your entertainment while you sit at home in West Cork, presumably soaking up the sunshine. What I’m saying, basically, is be careful what you wish for.

So, I now find myself employing some interesting techniques to jealously guard my holiday time from the invasive always-on possibilities that technology allows.

After years of chasing down internet cafés to print out boarding passes or send emails, I have deleted Gmail from my phone entirely for the week.

I have turned all notifications off. My Out Of Office auto response has been reduced to a single sentence ‘Feck off and leave me alone. I’ll see ya when I see ya’.

But like putting your finger in a hole in the wall of the Hoover Dam to stem a leak, it is nigh-on impossible to keep missives from home away for too long, and most of it is entirely my own fault.

I have the livestream of the Leinster match against Northampton on while getting the barbeque ready.

I find myself sneakily listening to a bit of the Brendan O’Connor show on Sunday morning. I can’t help but look in dismay at the reports about the tent villages lining Mount Street.

The miracle of 5G and the small army of electronic devices we have decamped to France with means we are forever connected.

It’s no bad thing, an absolute privilege I realise, but I do find myself pining for holidays of old when the only connection to home was a phone card and a weekly call to confirm we were all still alive.

The tide is turning

WE all know from a young age that you should beware of a dying wasp and so it seems to be with the Tories, recently pummelled in the local elections with little hope of another term, exacting their revenge on little Ireland by playing a horrible game of immigration tennis.

If you thought their idea to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was like something out of an overegged Spitting Image sketch, then it will be of little surprise that the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg and his kind are relishing the thought that Ireland now has an immigration numbers problem.

The realpolitik of the struggles between Britain and Europe arguably played out in our favour and was strategically very well played on the Irish side during Brexit. Sadly for Simon Harris, this tide is now turning the other way and we find ourselves in a very sticky bind.

On the one hand, you have a rogue Tory party happy to send a message to would-be refugees that they will be sent off to Rwanda if they chance their arm with the UK and are now seemingly encouraging those people to give the Emerald Isle a go instead.

On the other, you have European powers with their own political realities, who are unlikely to lift the burden on Ireland in the short term.

I mean, we were the ones campaigning for a soft border after all.

Those who believed Ireland might be immune to the nasty politics playing out all over Europe in recent years will soon realise that this was just wishful thinking. Maybe Leo picked a very good time to leave?

Derry rocks the boat!

IN spite of all this ugliness, I was somewhat relieved to see that some things never change, with the images from Shipquay Street in Derry where a ‘Rock the Boat’ world record attempt occurred last weekend.

There were 1,888 people taking part in the successful attempt to defeat the attempt made in Galway’s Salthill in 2019, when 1,809 participants made, ehm, history.

When you consider all the other events that have taken place on the streets of Derry over the years, isn’t it wonderful that there is space now for this kind of insane frivolity? More of this sort of thing!