Colm O'Regan: Five nice things you might get around to this summer
Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.
I’m not talking about a pub with a nice beer garden, recently painted grey interior and Pinterest aesthetic.
I’m talking the last of the dying breed, old-style mid-80s, leatherette, metal-legged, scabby stools. Floor covering. Flypaper. And a car park.
The inside smells like the smoke of the outside. The outside smells like the stout of the inside. No meals beyond purple snacks. No board games except a group playing 45.
Not even any trad session requiring rapt attention and abittahushnow. You went to a funeral afters in a pub like this before. Don’t wait for someone to die this time.
Don’t let the long days pass without seeing the fullest stretch. Don’t be frontloading all your work and then take it handy in August.
In August, the days are already shagged. Do it now. Be out and about, glance at the clock at five to eleven and say IT’S STILL BRIGHT HAH?
It doesn’t have to be kitesurfing with the goys. A spin for no reason to somewhere with a view.
This might be trickier to arrange but if you can pull a few strings or ropes, arrange to be pulled along on a square bale of straw by the tractor that’s bringing in the bales.
Not many people are doing square bales now. But they’re not gone the way of sugar sandwiches yet. There’s still a few knocking around.
And if you can manage at all, there’s nothing like a square bale sledding.
You may have been on the biggest rollercoaster in Dubai, or bungee-jumped off something that would give health and safety officers hives, but when you’re sitting on a bale and the rope goes taut, you're jerked forward at 15 miles an hour, you can’t bate it.
I still miss it. And when I was towed, it was a dinky little Massey with no cab. The tractors that are going now would allow you to experience g-forces only space tourists get.
The sound of straw scraping on stubble. The edge of the bale against the back of your knee. The stubble scraping your ankles like a hug from your father when he was due a shave.
The city folk might yearn for the wide open spaces in summer, but they have something we country people still crave: Town of a summer’s morning.
We’re fierce busy now, but do you remember going to town early and you only had “a few messages”. Just wandering around the empty streets.
The cafes are open. Dunnes is open. You’re the first one into Waterstones. Okay, this is about Cork on a summer’s morning, but pick your own destination.
It’s a mini-city break for an hour. It won’t last. All the langers will be up soon. Taking up parking spaces. You can leave then, your few bits done.
There will be mud. There will be a hoor of day in August. You’ll be slightly glum that “that’s it now, the days are hosed”.
You, the men and the mice staring at your best-laid plans in tatters. Not much time left in the summer now.
But THAT’S the time to go walking in the woods. Not in the sun with the fair-weather friends.
It’s never too late. Head out at 8. With your coat and wellies. Stay till it’s dark. Back home in time for the business end of the Rose of Tralee.
And at the end of the summer, you can look at your list and say – “it flew, but I remembered it.”
