Edel Coffey: This post-pandemic phase has started to feel a bit like a post-joy phase

The last two years seems to have slowly leached the spontaneity and joie-de-vivre from day-to-day life

My French friends understand that making the small things as pleasurable, joyful, and beautiful as you can, has the power to infuse your day with much pleasure, joy and beauty.

"The Irish are the Oxen of the human race." So said a friend on a recent night out. To give the comment some context, I was just back from a trip to Paris and was proselytising about how the French seem to know how to find the pleasure in everything.

They have an effortless ability to make every moment in their lives, even the mundane ones, about pure, sensual pleasure. A passing ray of sunlight is an excuse to bask, luxuriate, take a selfie, pour a glass of wine, read a poem, share a kiss. While we Irish might squint, pull a blind down and say “this heat is killing me”. My friend nodded. “They are the cats of the human race,” she said. “We Irish are the oxen.”