Finding the festive to escape Ireland’s cold dark nights

I was at the Arcade Fire gig in Dublin the night before the budget was unleashed.... songs and snowballs filled the air.

Work — if you still have it — was forgotten for a bit.

THURSDAY: I turned 29 yesterday. So, I’m told, 30 is next.

As my 30s are to be filled with — I imagine — garden centres, Skodas, male-pattern baldness — I’m writing up a bucket list of sorts: things to do before my 20s/life ends.

There’ll be the usuals, like bungee jumping, swimming with dolphins, running a marathon. But too, I’ll include: tattoos with Galvin, late arrival and stupid question at Keano press conference, trip to Minsk with John Higgins and his manager.

In the meantime, this week, there hasn’t been a lot of growing up going on.

Freedom fell from the sky and giddy, cold-nosed children throughout the land rolled it into a ball and stuck bits of coal in for eyes.

I was at the Arcade Fire gig in Dublin the night before the budget was unleashed from the gates of Leinster House. Songs and snowballs filled the air. Work — if you still have it — was forgotten for a bit.

Yes there’s a lot to be said for not acting your age.

WEDNESDAY: Speaking of not acting your age, I’m not too embarrassed to admit that I’ve read all but one of the Harry Potter series of books.

I didn’t bother with the last one — not because I’d matured, cultivated a goatee and graduated to Orwell — but due to the fact that someone told me the ending. I went to the film the other day though.

If elves and witches aren’t your thing, don’t worry. They’re not usually mine either.

The Sports Illustrated writer, Joe Posnanski, wrote: “I am, in many ways, a literal and linear thinker, not unlike the woman Garry Shandling once took on a date to the movie E.T. As the bicycle was flying across the moon, the woman turned to Shandling and said: ‘Yeah. Right.’ To which he thought: ‘I don’t think it’s a documentary.’

Neither is Harry Potter based on a true story... but its billionaire author JK Rowling has admitted in the past that the game played by wizards in her books, Quidditch, was inspired by hurling.

Those who’ve seen the magical things that some of our best inter-county stars can do without wands during the summer championship will have nodded, dropped the newspaper for a beat and thought: ‘that make sense’.

The game is played by two teams of seven with each goal worth 10 points but catching a little golden ball that flies around the pitch is worth 150 points. The game ends when this — the Snitch — is caught.

Now that’s one obvious mistake in the game isn’t it? Bill James the baseball statistician who prompted the Moneyball phenomenon has already said as much; 150 points for a game-winning score would totally skew the sport’s tactics.

You’d have one cynical Mourinho-type in a pointy warlock’s hat who’d park the brooms and just concentrate on winning the Snitch.

Imagine if it were true in rugby; the IRB would ultimately be forced to first trial new rules in the southern hemisphere.

Or, in football, FIFA would introduce a newly-designed, Swoosh-emblazoned Snitch every four years ahead of a World Cup.

The GAA would form a committee, Pat Spillane would call it ‘puke Quidditch’ and Kilkenny would win anyway.

TUESDAY: Budget Day? Let’s move on.

Remember the scene in Naked Gun when a character drives his car into a passing petrol tanker? It explodes and continues into an army truck which is carrying a nuclear war head, before it finally smashes through the front door of a fireworks factory. Boom.

Then the late, great Lesley Nielsen strolls on-screen waving away the gathering onlookers ‘Nothing to see here, folks!’.

Nothing to see here.

MONDAY: I got to speak to Munster and Ireland scrum half Tomás O’Leary. He’s preparing this morning for the game against the Ospreys on Sunday. Total focus.

But like everyone, he’s looking forward to Christmas too.

“We’ll train on the 24th” — that’s what professionals call Christmas Eve — “in either Cork or Limerick,” he told me.

“We obviously have lads from Cork, Limerick, Tipp, up the country as well as the foreign lads, so everyone does their own thing. And you can enjoy Christmas dinner.

“I’ll just head back to my parents’ house and relax with my family. Normal enough. Obviously then we have the game in Galway on the 26th. I’m raring to go for that as I really need game time. My body is fine but I just need matches,” says O’Leary, who is returning from injury.

He and his Munster teammates then play Ulster in Cork on New Years Day. Doesn’t he sometimes wish he was with his pals in the pub watching the matches rather than preparing for them over the festive period?

“No. Not at all. It’s just the lifestyle, just the way it is. There’s other times I can relax.

“We might have a Christmas party. We usually do something. The injured lads are the ones who organise it so I’m sure they have something planned.”

And top of your list this year? “Maybe the X-kinect thing — like the Wii. A few of the lads have got it and it looks good, hopefully that might be a bit of craic on Christmas Day.”

It’s the time of year for the kid in all of us — even if, for a lot of it, you’ll have your head where most men wouldn’t put a snow shovel in the name of Magners League points.

* Rugby fans can log onto the Guinness Rugby Supporters Facebook Page for latest news and updates from inside the Munster camp with Tomás O’Leary and Jerry Flannery. Visit: www.Facebook.com/GuinnessRugbyIreland

* Twitter: @adrianrussell mail: [e-mail]