Lycra lads, ladies on sun loungers and kids coveting 99s - it must be summer

THERE are some days when you arrive back in Ireland from some sun-baked paradise where it’s been scorchio for a week and you wonder why we put up with living on this godforsaken island.

After a week lying on a beach watching inflatables lolling on the water in the Mediterranean sun, you arrive back in Dublin to face a 20-minute queue for taxis in some endless tobacco-riddled tunnel.

Then into the car to meet a Dublin taxi driver who’s always called Bernard and who complains the whole way home about every single thing that’s wrong with the city now and has been wrong with the city since the time of the Vikings.

Then there are other rare days, when the weather gods and the bank holiday gods have a natter and decide that these poor Irish people had enough misery, thank you very much, and that after 800 years of oppression at the hands of Brits, bishops and Bovril, they are going to give us a glorious bank holiday weekend as a little reminder that we do, indeed, live in paradise.

Well, last weekend was a whopper. We had the good fortune of being in the sunny south east for some of it.

Children frolicked on beaches, lycra-clad men pedalled along expansive greenways (that was me) and exhausted mothers cuddled up with a book on the sun lounger, sipping a glass of sauvignon blanc as the evening stretched on into infinity.

Even Dublin did its bit this weekend – the endless roadworks in our neck of the woods are meant to be finished by now, but even the builders put down the jackhammers for a while to let us enjoy a bit of summer bliss. It looks like their comrades out on the site of the National Children’s Hospital took a leaf out of that book, too.

The builders are still working on a cycle lane that will eventually wrap around the north and south coastline of Dublin and we took in some of the route with the kiddos on Monday, taking a lovely long, relaxed cycle to St Anne’s Park. It’s amazing what kids will do for the promise of a 99.

It’s a shame that it takes glorious weather for us to remember how lucky we are to live in a country that is at peace and prosperous, and where our kids have so much to look forward to. And it’s easy to lose perspective in the sometimes overwhelming digital world a lot of us now spend more time in than is healthy.

So here’s to a long summer ahead and to more ‘Hibernian nights on the western edge of Europe’ – as Enda Kenny’s speechwriter’s once wrote.

Bags of stress, in my day

SPEAKING of kids, I suppose I should mention that as well as bank holiday gods and weather gods, we also have the Leaving Cert god (who many refer to simply as The Devil) and it is likely he has some hand in the upturn in sunshine over the bank holiday too.

Yes, like clockwork, the high pressure coincides with the kick-off of our national examinations or The Stress Olympics, as I remember them.

I still find it triggering when I think back to the huge, oversized school bags, the endless preparation and mock exams, the absolutely insane levels of pressure that were built into the Leaving Cert as it was back in the 90s.

The stress dreams don’t come back regularly but I still have them – sitting in a hall trying to use a pencil that keeps cracking or endlessly wandering around corridors trying to find an exam hall that doesn’t exist.

I mean, it’s not Vietnam or WWII, but every generation has their story to tell I suppose. I don’t know if the pressure is the same these days – I truly hope that all the lip service being paid to mental health in the national conversation is somehow reflected in how we educate our teenagers.

If you are a Leaving Cert student with exams this
week, you are probably reading this column to avoid
doing any more study, which is exactly what I would have done.

The thing is, you really have nothing to worry about – the old cliché about doing your best is true. And it’s even truer that Leaving Cert points do not a good human make.

The big successes in life are in the small things around you – the people you love, the friends you make, the experiences you have. Go forward without fear. Nobody lies on their deathbed regretting what points they did or didn’t get.

This is the ‘real vote’

AND so here it is. The competition that everyone has been talking about for weeks. Whoever gets selected will go forth and represent the people of West Cork and the larger Ireland South constituency, and be our mascot for the years to come.

No, I am not talking about the local and European elections, I’m talking about West Cork’s Cutest Pet, which is open now and has prizes worth €250 to be won! Get your entries in now. Sure we might even send the winner to Brussels, depending on how things go this Friday.