We’re all too happy to tune out in our time of troubles

THE Kennedys of Castlerosse. That’s how we used to know the summer holidays were over. Of course the leaves turned gold too. The weather turned cold. And wasps, threatened with retirement, turned nasty, not that wasps are ever the charmers of the insect kingdom.

Nonetheless, the death knell of summer happiness was the Kennedy's signature tune. Term time meant listening at the lunchtable to that interminably reasonable old trout, Mrs Kennedy, prissing comfortingly on about how to resolve the latest townland tiff.

The summer had been full of excitement and dreams, stories and new possibilities, and now that was all over, narrowed down to the chill pre-shaped sameness of bloody Castlerosse, the radio equivalent of gumboots.