Julie Jay: Mammy gets to take over the car playlist during the summer 

As the temperatures soared across the country last week, this woman’s heart was anything but low

Julie Jay greatly impressed an American tourist when she was 11 by identifying A Woman's Heart when the woman didn't know the name of the song or the singer. Picture: iStock 

Have I actually been a terrible mother all this time, or has it just been raining? This was the question I asked myself as we made it through three days of parenting in the sun, which is surely a world record.

If my children ever tell you they had an awful childhood, don’t believe them.

They managed to get to the beach not one day, not two days, but three days in a row, and I have the bra covered in sand to prove it.

The temperatures in West Kerry last week were never seen before, and while a voice in the back of my head tells me this is surely due to some sort of climate crisis and global warming, it’s hard to hear that voice over the sound of A Woman’s Heart blaring out of my car stereo on the way to the trá.

I always stream the album this time of year as it instantly takes me back to summers spent in West Kerry in the early ’90s, when my auntie would volunteer to take myself and my cousins to the beach with Mary Black, Eleanor McEvoy, and Dolores Keane blaring on cassette in her Fiat.

So ubiquitous was the album that, much like the Our Father prayer, we could all reel it off on demand should a bishop ever appear. This learnt skill proved handy for impressing tourists, especially when I worked in Dingle tourist haunts during the summers.

I can recall an American coming up to me one summer’s day announcing she was looking for a song but didn’t have the title or the name of the singer.

It’s hard to find a song without either, so I asked for a lyric. She mumbled something about a heart and a woman, to which I confidently announced “Oh, A Woman’s Heart,” and she was floored at what she presumed to be an encyclopaedic knowledge of Irish music.

I returned to sixth class after that summer, because I was probably about 11 at the time, such was the way with the 1990s and child labour laws.

So, to the soundtrack of Irish female vocalists, I now bring my own two to the beach, which I hope to do for a long time, because child labour laws have changed dramatically. Kids now get to be just kids and have their parents fund their Haribo habit well into their 30s.

Because Number One is in school, he tends to have a few buddies on the beach. It is amazing how even at the age of five he is aware that hanging with his mother is social suicide and immediately slopes off with his mates as I lollop along in the sand with three beach bags (toys, food, water, towels) and make a mental note to invest in one of these pull-along trolley contraptions the more organised parents are utilising.

As lovely as it has been to have so many parents congregating in the one spot for a couple of hours at a time, I can’t help but feel a little on the back foot sometimes when I see how much some of my peers have things down.

Last year, water guns were all the rage. This year, it’s boogie boards that have become the fixation of choice.

We haven’t purchased one yet, but the trip to the local surf shop is inevitable, because Number One has spent the week sharing a friend’s and thereby sinking the whole crew — all three of them — in the process.

I can now understand why Kate Winslet’s character didn’t let poor old Jack share the piece of wood at the end of Titanic: She didn’t want to capsize, and it’s every woman for herself out here.

I did drop one ball. I allowed my biggest boy to get burned on his shoulders. I can’t believe I let it happen but, in my defence, if the boy in question is capable of filing his own tax returns, he should be capable of applying his own suncream.

Yes, the boy is more a man and I am less his parent than his wife, but as spouses, part of the contract is making sure we are both sufficiently covered in SPF at all times, especially if our collective skin pallor makes the Addams family look sunkissed.

Of course, being at the beach with the kids means being in a state of constant vigilance. As much as it’s great to catch up with parenting friends, you can never give anybody your full attention.

But while at the playground I can sometimes feel the social guilts of not being able to chat for long periods, at the beach, there is a shared silent agreement that as much as we are looking out for our children, we also look out for each other’s children.

Especially when this includes keeping an eye on the boggie boards and making sure they don’t end up in the lost and found in the car park, along with the stunning Next blue fleece, which if it is still there tomorrow will become Number Two’s new blue fleece. 

As already established, and Kate Winslet would attest, it’s every woman for herself out here. Especially when the item in contention is machine-washable and has a high cotton count.

As we watch the kids dig a hole (literally, rather than the politician sense) my husband reminisces once again about the time his auntie took him to the beach and let him get severely burned.

I ask him how old he was at the time. “About 20,” he replies, and I despair in the way only a woman’s heart can despair.

I remind him that it was hardly his auntie’s responsibility to keep a college student sufficiently protected from the sun. He laughs while also agreeing with me.

Whatever about a sunny day, if there is a greater high than being told you are right on all counts, I haven’t met it yet.