They should have had a warning. RTE Gold was playing the music from the late 90s last week. THE LATE 90s? GOLD? I was a fully grown man during those years! Albeit with a terrible earring and clothes that didn’t fit.

Imagine being at the barricades and turning around seeing a thousand slightly bashful uncles ready to give you a tow

"What sets Irish pubs apart is not trad music or old High Nellies hanging from the ceiling. It’s comfortable seats and the right lighting. Or lack of it."

Will my watch rat me out to the life insurance people if the tilt of my arms suggests that I’m wall-to-wall bags-of-cans at the moment?

"There are the grunts of frustration as I realise I’ve made a bags of it and seek to blame my daughter somehow. And I didn’t check my phone once."

Sustainability’s a hard sell right now. Our impulse is just to be unsustainable for a while. We want run out into the streets shouting “WE’VE ENOUGH SUSTAINING. I WANT AN OUTDOOR HANGOVER. TAKE MY MONEY AND GIVE ME A SUBSTANDARD POLLUTING THING.

'Watching the news of lockdown easing, I’m delighted to see all the delight of others but also part of me is a Pullet on Day 1 in the Hen House'

At the risk of triggering pedants, staycations will be big again this year

"Is it any wonder we’re the generation best equipped for the pandemic? The coping classes reared on a diet of Extra Programmes featuring dystopian visions of the future and psychedelically imagined German Electronica, followed by compulsory prayers?"

In early childhood there are the various milky things, then childy foods, then nibbles of adults’ food. But then you start to notice their impact on the groceries