It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, so what better time then to look at the cattle trade.

Bandon mart manager Tom McCarthy, never one to shy away from a good headline, had one for me on Monday.

The Gigginstown House bull sale last Saturday scaled new heights, with a purchaser from West Cork, John Applebe, describing the sale as “another step up”.

I didn’t go to the Grand National on Saturday. I was working. But I heard it on the radio, which is the same thing really.

I hear Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger is going under the knife this week. His heart is giving him trouble.

This week, it really feels life is zooming by. We are all busy. Between farming and confirmations. Between religion and our calling to the land, we haven’t a moment to spare.

Store cattle — and bullocks in particular — have suffered a €60 per head price drop over the past two weeks.

A beef farmer from Curraghawaddra whom I met in Macroom over the weekend asked me if this business of writing something for the paper every week was “a bit like a priest putting together his sermon?”

On Tuesday last if you happened to be at Kanturk mart, you would have found a mart yard packed with jeeps, trailers and trucks, and mart pens full of quality weanling stock.

The Friesian store bullock, a bit like David Cameron, has experienced a fall from grace this past week.

While Ireland’s attempts to achieve European glory in soccer have kicked off with a sense of deflation (Monday night’s match was a match we should have won), it’s anything but deflation on our farms right now.

I’d say there were more Cork fellows back in Gortatlea mart on Friday than there were up in Thurles on Sunday. And I’m sure they had a better day out to boot.

The only regret I had in Bandon mart on Monday was that I’d didn’t have my cheque book with me.

Thank God summer has finally arrived. I thought for a while that it would never get here. But it has.

From Skibbereen to Gigginstown, it has been quality all the way at the cattle sales.

I looked at my cattle today while wearing my boots. It was the first time this year that I was able to venture into the field wellington free.

As you well know at this stage, I’m a glass half full man, rather than a glass half empty. Indeed so long as I have any drink at all, I’m happy.

I find it very hard to believe that you will have any great interest in reading this mart report today.