Colm O'Regan: Dear Potato People, I will front your campaign

461 Days 12 Hours 55 Minutes. The countdown is on. In May 2021 the World Potato Congress is coming to Ireland. The WPC is a “non-profit organisation representing potato jurisdictions around the world”. Hear that? We might be a country, but first and foremost we are a potato jurisdiction.

I wrote about this before but I need to write about it again. The World Potato Congress is coming here at a time of potato crisis.

To put it in terms potatoficionados will understand: our spuds are underdone. They are hard in the middle.

Last year was the second-lowest acreage of potatoes in Ireland. Bord Bia and the IFA are going to launch a campaign to get millennials to eat more potatoes.

And I am not one for COME GET ME pleas but I’m issuing one right now. Dear Potato People, I will front your potato campaign. I will pose in a bath of potatoes or drape myself over a potato harvester suggestively. We simply cannot let this blight continue.

So how do we convince millennials to eat potatoes — we hit them where they care the most: Nostalgia.

It doesn’t have to be real nostalgia. Invented will do fine. A recent data analysis of social media showed that a staggering 98% of millennials here claimed to have worked on the bog as a child. But they didn’t. I was there and I didn’t see any of them with their ankle socks.

But the bog-work is tainted with climate change issues. Bogs sequester carbon and preserve bio-diversity. There will come a time when to admit to spending summers cutting turf will be akin to wistfuly remembering the rainforests you burned with your Uncle Joao.

But the potato — that’s a less problematic child-labour memory. Years ago the Autumnal mid-term break meant one thing only: spud-picking. Nowadays most potatoes are picked online.

But many formative years were spent stooping over freshly turned soil, grabbing a British Queen and stuffing her unceremoniously into a bag – 30 bags to a crate, and paid £9 for a crate.

This was when £9 was worth something and was not just the cost of half a brunch. The drills were crowded with men, women, and children stooping, filling, scuttling, and smoking. Proper smoking. None of this Cbeebies vaping shite.

The hard-core brands — Sweet Afton, Carrolls, Major, and the odd Silk Cut for the kiddies. The cigarettes were not held delicately between the index and middle fingers like a louche theatrical agent wearing a velvet smoking jacket. No, the fags were crushed between thumb and forefinger by the smoker who clearly intended to smoke the very marrow out of them.

And talk about mental health benefits! We INHALED the anti-depressants locked up in that loam. At my peak I was picking four boxes a day.

Buoyed by the testosterone of a proper week’s work, my body comfortably aching I went to Coachford Disco that last Saturday night of the week and got a girl out to dance (ie shift) without having to do a second – and more pathetic — tour of the dance floor. It was fast becoming one of the best weeks of my life.

Let’s get back to picking potatoes now that the turf will be justly transitioned. Otherwise children of the future won’t be forced to listen to any stories of hard work.

The Potato Congress is coming. Look busy.