Isn’t it great that you can discover a new hobby in the prime of middle age?

My new hobby, ladies and gentlemen, is watching young people in designer wellies flail around in the muck at the Electric Picnic from the comfort of my living room sofa.

As lazy media clichés go, there are none more hackneyed than the annual “revellers have descended on Stradbally this weekend for the annual…” blah blah blah. It boils my blood having to look at them in all their youthful splendour as I sit at home half-way through a mortgage, worrying about pulling a muscle if I get up too fast...

But this year, it was sweet revenge for those of us who didn’t buy a ticket.

From the comfort of our insulated homes, we got to feast our eyes as eighty thousand of them went down to Laois for the weekend, to deal with the sort of conditions you might flinch at in a World War 1 novel.

Listen, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to be punching down on generation rent. I did the Picnic for the guts of a decade and I'd defend it to anybody. I know the joy of wandering around Body and Soul at three in the morning having a fairly involved conversation with God.

I know what it is to eat something unidentifiable out of a cardboard tray at dawn. I’ve seen things in Portakabins, done in the name of digestion, that will surely be with me on my death bed.

So don’t @ me when I tell you that we decided to settle in with a takeaway last Saturday to watch youngsters on TikTok pulling each other through floods of brown water in designer hats.

Don’t judge me that I decided to have an extra shower half way through to celebrate, just because I could. Will you not let us have our fun too?!!!

The sad truth is – part of me still wants, needs, to be back there. The highlights looked brilliant: the footage of the Saw Doctors bringing the Mayo team onstage, Fontaines closing it on

Sunday and confirming Slane for next year, not to mention CMAT, the new queen of Ireland, paying tribute to Dolly Parton… So I’ll be back soon, Electric Picnic. 

And staying in a hotel convenient to the venue.

Down in west Waterford, a short enough spin from Youghal, James Dyson is in a stand-off with the locals.

He hoovered up the 850-acre Ballynatray estate for around thirty million two years ago, and by most accounts it started well.

The house has been used by community groups and he's credited locally with a five-figure contribution towards the new playground in Knockanore.

He even has Mark Zuckerberg buying up the road, should he feel the need for a new friend on Facebook.

Since then, things have soured a little. The dispute involves Templemichael Castle and its graveyard, the ruins of Molana Abbey nearby, and the car park run by the estate that leads to both. Locals say the opening hours of the car park have been cut back in recent months and that a barrier has gone up at the graveyard.

While some accept that may have been about anti-social behaviour, the feeling is that it's gone too far. Templemichael hasn't taken a burial in decades but people still go in to visit their own.

Waterford City and County Council says it is engaging with the landowner over concerns about traditional rights-of-way, and legal advisers have been brought in.

As Mr. Dyson probably isn’t aware, there is nothing in this country that will move a parish faster than a barrier between people and their dead. Hopefully, things can be worked out. What’s the old bar sign saying again – ‘Life sucks and then you die?’

New bylaws mean you can't use smart glasses in Cork libraries without permission from a librarian.

Cameras and recording devices were already covered in the county libraries, needing written permission, but the glasses have brought it to a head - it’s one thing to go on with a Polaroid camera, it’s another entirely if it’s a pair of glasses and nobody knows you’re recording.

And it isn't only the library either. Wetherspoons has told customers not to record staff or other punters, with chairman Tim Martin saying the glasses enable surreptitious surveillance.

The last thing any of us would want, after all, is for footage to emerge of us supping a pint in a Wetherspoons. Theatres in London are asking people to take them off too. Dublin Comic Con has banned them along with drones and selfie sticks.

All very understandable, but there is another perspective. Last week, I listened to a podcast about how a blind runner completed the Brighton Marathon using Meta smart glasses, and about how genuinely revolutionary these devices have been for those with vision impairments in their day to day lives.

Meta is even donating 15,000 pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to eligible service users of Vision Ireland, the national sight loss charity.

It’s worth keeping in mind, that in all the paranoia about big tech and AI, we should not turn our backs on the big, positive changes technology can also usher in too.