It’s a bit of a honeymoon period, September in Ireland. I’ve found myself basking in the mildness, memories of summer holidays baking in France causing me to look at the thermostat with thanks. Twenty degrees in the kitchen. This is the kind of thing we are built for. This is how we are meant to live. Not thirty-five degrees with no breeze.

It’s been unseasonably mild this past week, with outside temperatures starting to flirt with summer highs, but it’s an Indian summer with a nostalgic air, the heat can build by mid-afternoon, but the evenings here in Dublin are bright and crisp. I just love this time of year.

It’s all kicking off in our house these past weeks, with school back and the myriad ECAs, or extra-curricular activities, starting up again. It’s the three-letter acronym that strikes fear into the heart of Irish parents, in the same way the BCG invoked horror when we were in national school back in the day.

It’s a hundred quid for arts and crafts, another hundred quid for drama, three hundred quid for piano, the GAA membership, the basketball membership, the voluntary school contribution… the list is long and exhausting and I might need to hire a PA to run my comms on all the WhatsApp groups, not that I could afford one after all the rest goes out of the account. It’s like a mini stock market crash of my own creation. Thing is, we never planned to have hugely busy schedules for the kids, but it sort of creeps up.

Also, the practical reality is that some of the classes act as additional childcare, giving my wife or I the extra hour to leg it from work for collections.

I am trying to enjoy it this year. It’s easy to forget, in the spin and stress and cost of it all, that these are probably the days we will pine for when we’re older and greyer. And as each year passes with increasing momentum, I try to pause on these shortening September evenings and give thanks for the bounty that’s around us.

I try to stay patient and count our many blessings. And I urge the universe and time to slow the hell down and let us taste it all for just a little bit longer.

Cash for culture

The Government meanwhile has found a few quid of its own and has been encouraging our youth to smell the roses and bathe in the arts this week. Culture Minister Patrick O’Donovan wants to put €100 into the hands (well, the phones) of every 16-year-old in the country, 70,000-odd of them, to spend on arts and culture. It’ll cost about €7.5 million and is being floated for the Budget next month.

Fine Gael floated this before the last election as €300 for 16 and 17-year-olds. So, what’s being proposed is a third of the money for half the teenagers, two years on, which by the standards of Irish election promises nearly counts as an over-delivery. The French, who started all this by giving their 18-year-olds €300, have since cut theirs to €150, so we’re arriving at the party just as they’re stacking the chairs.

It raises the old question, what counts as the arts? A Fianna Fáil TD, Peter Cleere, told Newstalk the voucher would do for music, comedy, drama and “sporting” events. It’s a pretty loose definition. There’s quite a chasm between Shostakovich and the UFC, like.

In France it is targeted at live performances, music gigs, books and movie or theatre tickets. Teachers also get access to funding to take their classes on cultural trips.

I have to say I love the spirit of this. Anything that encourages kids into the book shops or concert halls is a good thing, if you ask me.

The uptake in France was very high, at around 84%, but with concerns about the concentration of activity amongst middle-and upper-class kids. There was some controversy in France about the use of the money to purchase manga comics.

It’s fair to say they wouldn’t likely go for subsidising tickets for the greyhound racing. As is always the case in Ireland, bundling the arts in with sports really does nobody any favours but at least they are trying something.

Let’s hope it all works out

I’ve been looking at the elections in Germany through my fingers these last weeks. Historic advances for the far right are not something anyone would want to see, especially there.

On Sunday the AfD took the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with 38% of the vote, two weeks after nearly winning an outright majority in Saxony-Anhalt, and on the same day the far left took Berlin, with Merz’s crowd squeezed in the middle. None of this bodes well.

There will be French presidential elections in 2027, and the direction of travel looks similar there. Can the centre hold?

You could easily get yourself into a panic: the robots coming for the jobs, fascists abounding on the continent, a thundering eejit in the White House…

When it all gets too much, I pause, I return to the bright September evenings, the sweaty GAA gear, the laughter and play dates and The Traitors on the telly.

Everything will be grand, I say to myself. Everything will be grand. It’s the hope that kills you.