Routine and order has been flung to the wayside, in favour of sun, sand, and second place!
I THINK I’ve given summer ’25 everything I’ve got to give. It occurred to me as I sat on my favourite deckchair for longer than my usual three minutes and I couldn’t
get up!
I was a broken woman. I’ve jumped off things, climbed up things, inflated and deflated things, sat on the beach in glorious sunshine, and sat there with towels wrapped around me in blustery wind; I’ve put on the usual ‘white wine and crisps’ half stone (which is probably here for life now), I’ve eaten so many BBQs that I never want to see a burger again, ever; I’ve finally made my peace with the fact that no one in the house will be in bed before 11pm which means I’ll struggle to crawl out of bed before 9am and at times I’ve felt like losing my mind. But it’s all good, great in fact.
Further signs that we’ve been summering hard include the fact that I can no longer properly open the door of my hot press. The bag of clothes for the charity shop I put in there in June, when law and order reigned, is still there and various other bits and pieces have been flung in on top which has more or less jammed the door.
I think we’re at the stage that everything has to come out, to be put back in again but sure…it’s summer! Who has the time for that! My car is also looking a bit ‘lived in’, and every time I open the boot a tsunami of Returnables come cascading out, because for some unknown reason that’s where I put them, along with the paddle board, buckets and spades, various raincoats and hoodies, and the bags for life (buried somewhere in the deep dark abyss and never to be found when they’re needed).
I honestly can’t remember when I last pulled out the mop. That’s the beauty of having polished concrete floors like I do, you don’t see the dirt and once you get over the horror when you brush it up, it’s brilliant. An unloved and past-its-best watermelon has been taing up prime space in the fridge for over a week along with a few other forgotten and almost unrecognisable items. There’s also a nice layer of dust around, as well as a good crunch of sand underfoot in most rooms.
I’m not sure how we got here really, as I’m usually the type of person who can’t relax if there’s so much as a spoon languishing in the sink, but that’s what summer can do to you. One day you’re meal planning and colour coding the pantry, the next you’re justifying fish fingers for dinner, and scanning the label for evidence of even a tiny bit of fish whilst also fishing in the laundry basket for clean shorts. It’s equal parts liberating, and stressful.
And don’t talk to me about the flies. My option is to open the doors and basically welcome five million flies and their cousins into the house, or die of the heat. The thing is that my house is so hot, they won’t survive long anyway so you’d imagine the word would have spread among the fly community to avoid my gaff. But no. They can’t say they haven’t been warned: I’m on fly swat number four of the summer, with a deadly back hand. Take that!
In the middle of the madness, somehow we decided to go to a dog show. Not just go along to a dog show, but to actually enter Billy, the seven-month-old retriever. After almost a decade of parenting you’d think I’d know better than to blurt things out without thinking them through, but no. I blame the heat. When I said: ‘maybe we could think about bringing Billy to the dog show? We’ll see,’ my smallie interpreted it as: ‘We’re definitely 100% bringing Billy to the dog show.’
We’re not really dog show people but Billy needed a good wash anyway, and we did some intensive lead training (five minutes during which he gobbled down at least 33 treats) and hoped for the best. To be fair it all went reasonably well. He had never seen so many other dogs in his life and he was mindblown, and even got a semi-serious proposition from the owner of another retriever who declared how gorgeous their kids would be. He made it to the final of the ‘dog you’d most like to come home’ class. It was close, but no cigar, but we didn’t mind because we got to take him home! He slept solidly for two days. He comes across as being tough as old boots but sure he’s only a baby. Of course now that we’re over the outrage of him not winning, we’re in training for the next local dog show and after that who knows, Crufts maybe?
We’re in the thick of summer festivals and I might be biased but I don’t think anyone does festivals better than West Cork. Another wonderful festival has just wrapped up in Courtmacsherry and we’ll have Timoleague shortly to look forward to. Driving through Leap over the Bank Holiday weekend I was handed some stunning sunflowers as part of their fundraising flower weekend. The village looked incredible, and there’s countless other such fabulous events taking place over the coming weeks. And what do all these events have in common? Voluntary committees who have vision, energy and a bit of drive. Note how I didn’t say they’ve got time because, and I don’t want to sound like a dose, but we all have the same amount of time, it’s just how we choose to spend it.
Right, so before we all start stressing about places on school buses and uniforms, I reckon there’s a bit more craic to be squeezed out of Summer 25. Next up, I’m headed for the All Ireland camogie final. I’m determined to climb the steps of the Hogan Stand and this is my chance! Just checking, where are we on the skorts?
