Glorious Irish day cannot be beaten

I CAN only hope the extraordinary weather of last week has continued into this one.

As columnists must submit their copy ahead of publication date, it is impossible to know what the skies may deliver on the day it appears. But certainly, as I write this, it is a beautiful outdoors.

Earlier, walking on the Seven Heads in west Cork, I looked down over acres of gorse, a carpet of gold above a blue sea, beneath a blue sky. Out of the wind — there was an east wind this morning — the sun was so warm that we discarded our jackets (leaving them under a bush for collection upon our return) and, indeed, we came upon a couple basking in a sheltered corner of a beach who had discarded very much more than their jackets.