Broken sunglasses, old-school 99s and shoes on the beach are the markers of Bernard O'Shea's Irish summer 

Bernard wonders if there's a massive conspiracy that keeps him and his family stuck in traffic on the way to the beach

With three older sisters it was always Bernard's cone that got dropped. Photograph Moya Nolan

Before you could get stout, gin or sea salt flavoured ice cream there was the age old 99. The predominate flavour was red. Not even a flavour just a colour. It would be be draped over your cone like an axe murderer had just raced behind the petrol station counter where you were inevitably purchasing it.

The real tragedy of course wasn’t that the flavour was a colour, it was that there was always a cone sacrificed to the filling station four court deities. Akin to a votive offering once given by our Celtic ancestors to their gods, except this time it wasn’t a ceremonial sword but a badly pulled Mr. Whippy that couldn’t defy physics and toppled over because your sister tried carrying four of them to the car instead of going back twice.