End schools’ strangle-hold on holidays and save us all the hassle

THE gardaí may have built up a mountain of overtime hours ensuring that we all stay safe on the roads this weekend, but who’s protecting us in the airports, I ask you?

A hazard has recently emerged there. Among the millions jetting off to their second homes in Torremolinos, Malaga, Nerja, Cannes and Bratislava are a few thousand toddlers, each equipped with a lethal neon-pink wheelie case. The combination of the low height of the toddler and the long dark handle of the wheelie creates a kind of moving trip-wire.

I saw one woman at the airport come a cropper over one of these toddler plus wheelie combinations this weekend and it was good and spectacular, involving sunspecs (off the hair) passports and flight details (out of her hand) and a mobile phone which, as mobile phones do, disassembled into its constituent parts when it hit the floor.