I spent last week playing tour guide as the Australian cousins were over for their holidays, so I dragged them up Howth Head, the cliff path that looks out over Ireland’s Eye and across to Lambay. We went by Balscadden House on the way, where a teenage WB Yeats lived for a few years in the 1880s and started scribbling his first poems. There were seals in the bay below, tourists of every shape wheezing up the inclines and the sun was out for once like it had a bit of point to prove to our visitors from Perth. It was very nice.

The thing about that headland is that it has form. A bit over a century ago, on a hot July Sunday in 1914, a white-sailed yacht called the Asgard came gliding in past Lambay with 900 German Mauser rifles stuffed into the cabin, bound for the Irish Volunteers. At the helm was Erskine Childers, who, before he ran the guns, had been the best-selling spy novelist of his day. His big book, The Riddle of the Sands, was basically a yarn about a secret enemy fleet massing in the shallows to slip across and invade these islands while nobody was watching. Then he went and did a bit of the sneaking himself, into the very harbour below me. So Howth has previous when it comes to minding what arrives off the water. Which brings me to last weekend, when the latest vessel of note off the head was a French air defence warship.

She spent a few days on manoeuvres in the Irish Sea, about 22km off Howth, with her transponder switched off so she wouldn’t show up on any of the ship-tracking apps. Invisible to the internet, basically, but visible to anyone with a window seat coming in to land at Dublin Airport. You can invest millions in high tech stealth technology, it seems, but nobody is invisible to the nosey Ryanair passenger. The ship carries advanced radar and up to 32 anti-aircraft missiles, and it’s here because we take over the EU presidency this week and we don’t own the gear to mind the high-level meetings ourselves. We even had to lend the French crew Irish tactical radios to talk to our navy, because ours doesn’t run the Nato-standard kit.

Now, I know it’s deeply unfashionable to be going on about military spending. We’re a country where the rents are sky high and you need to consider a mortgage before buying an avocado. Young people can’t get a toe in the door of adult life. Homelessness is still something we step around on the way to work.

Defence feels like the last place you’d want the money going. But the first job of any government, before the local bypass or the broadband or a bike shed, is keeping its own people safe, and we’ve quietly outsourced that to the neighbours.

We spend roughly 0.2% of GDP on defence, the lowest in the whole EU by a distance, while the Russian shadow fleet mooches around the Atlantic near the cables that carry our daily Wordle efforts back and forth to New York. We should remember that goodwill has a short shelf life. If Nigel Farage ever strolls into Downing Street, does Britain’s interest in minding us survive the week?

If Marine Le Pen gets the keys to the Élysée, are the French still sending a warship and a complimentary bag of croissants? Might be time we started minding ourselves.

Croker leaky defences

Speaking of leaky defences, myself and Fachtna were back in Croke Park to support the footballers against Mayo in another disappointing day out last weekend.

I took the Australian cousin, who hasn’t seen a Gaelic football game in a while and I had to see the dull, monotonous affair through his eyes. It was hard going, let me tell you.

Lateral handpassing moves that skirted around the edge of the Mayo defence for what felt like years. I was only sorry he wasn’t visiting a week later for the hurling.

Still, what a stadium to bring someone to, and at least John Cleary’s men got there this year and made some good progress.

With the prize of a semi-final against Louth on the table, it was a really great chance for Cork to make an All Ireland final, in retrospect, but we never really showed up.

Widow’s Bay worth a look

Here’s a summer telly recommendation, given this week’s nautical introduction. Widow’s Bay on Apple TV is a great blend of horror and comedy that got us through a few rainy evenings recently.

Starring the brilliant Matthew Rhys, the series is set in the fictional New England island town of Widow’s Bay, which is doomed by a centuries-old curse they must defend themselves against.

And with absolutely zero help from the French either.