Emma Connolly: Scrape off the BBQ, dust down the firepit, but DON’T check the long-term forecast!

Our columnist has never been so ready to embrace the welcome April heat – except, of course, when it comes to all the de-wintering of the body that’s a necessary evil these days!

•THAT blast of heat came just in the nick of time didn’t it? It was like the whole country’s mood shifted up a gear or five, as if we had just won a county final, or the Tidy Towns.

‘Tis a grand country all the same if we could just put a roof on it!,’ ‘ah now we’re sucking diesel’ and ‘it’s a great day for it’ (‘it’ being anything from drying the clothes to building a house) is what we were all going around saying on repeat, giddy out but still with a wild panic in our eyes, looking nervously skywards, afraid we were going to jinx ourselves.

Good weather is great for business, though. All of a sudden there were burgers and sausages being incinerated in gardens all over the place, chicken marinating and people sipping rosé as if they were on the Riviera.

That was once we had cleaned the BBQ of course which is a job in itself but the blue skies helped, kind of.

We all made beelines to the garden centres, and hardware shops.

Lawns were finally getting the TLC they desperately deserved after the ‘prolonged wet spell,’ there was weeding, digging and planting to beat the band, with a symphony of lawnmowers and strimmers humming away in the background.

Music to our ears! God bless the work!

I did what I always do when the first glimpse of sun appears and started researching pergolas and awnings. I mean nothing says ‘you’ve arrived’ more than an outdoor room!

I’m also obsessed with the idea of an outdoor couch (ironic as I need an indoor couch), and sure why stop there? I’m looking into a hot tub and an ice bath and while we’re at it, an outdoor shower. It’d be handy, like.

And loads of outdoor lights. Everywhere. Who cares about attracting midges for miles! For now, we’ll make do with wheeling out the trusty BBQ and blasting up the fire pit that brings back all the lockdown vibes (shudder) and enjoy it while it lasts – speaking of which, has anyone been brave enough to look at the long-term forecast?

• Beauticians also get a lift in business when the sun comes out. Once all I had to do was slather myself in some tinted body moisturiser from Dove and apply a fresh coat of nail varnish on my toes and I was ready for a week in Costa del anywhere.

Now I feel I need a team of therapists to ‘de-winter’ me before I can consider even taking off my hoody.

I was a bit cocky in my early 40s, thinking I was going to swerve the whole middle-aged thing. What a load of old nonsense, said younger cocky me!

Now that I’m in the final quarter of the decade, I’m definitely feeling a whole lot less cocky. No matter how hard I moisturise my skin, it screams ‘old,’ or worse again ‘old lizard’–  I think I need to sit in a vat of olive oil for a few days and hope for the best.

Actually, do you know what? It would nearly suit me if the mercury dipped for a few weeks so I can get myself in order.

• Anyway, I nearly choked on my coffee the other day when I was indulging in a quick social media scroll and I saw that tickets for the Opera House Panto are on sale from May 1st.

I’ve a touch of PTSD over panto tickets, because for the past few years I’ve had really bad luck securing any – I’ve either missed out completely or got the worst seats in the house, like practically in another time zone.

Last year, when they shouted out the age-old line ‘he’s behind you,’ I could safely reply that ‘he wasn’t’ as we were literally in the very last row in the theatre, and I had a case of vertigo.

So while every fibre of me feels this is just insane that we have to book so early, I’ll be ready to log on come May 1st. Oh yes I will!

• So, we’re hoping to paint our house in the next few weeks. We’ve lived here for around seven years and it’s high time to get the job done. It’s such a huge decision, though, such a commitment and I’m really struggling to decide on the colour.

At the moment I’m driving around the countryside at around 20mph, peering over ditches  trying to get inspiration but to be honest all I’m mainly seeing are ... other unpainted houses!

I’m currently thinking about a dark green, but at the back of our house I’m trying out everything from black and grey to navy and brown. Send help! In the meantime I’ll be blowing the painting budget on tester pots.

• Finally, has anyone had any local election canvassers call around yet? We haven’t, although now that I think about it, our front door bell is on the blink so maybe they’ve been and gone without us realising.

I have to admit that I always get really uncomfortable when canvassers, or God forbid, the candidate themselves, call, and I either start laughing nervously for no reason at all or doing that non-stop chatter thing and try to invite them in for tea. Go on, go on, go on etc.

And then of course there’s the whole effort of trying to stop the dog from jumping on them and apologising for the fact that there’s loads of cobwebs on the front door because we’re Irish and never actually use that door, ever.

It turns into quite the palaver to be honest. I’m thinking it’s probably best not to fix the bell until after June 7th... unless of course any of the callers want to offer an opinion on the house colour?

Quid pro quo and all the rest.