I look like a hat tumbling down the road on a pile of washing

ONCE a high-flying magazine editor in Dublin, living the classic, harried executive lifestyle, Kate Kerrigan swapped it all to be a fulltime novelist and live in her idyll — the fishing village of Killala, Co. Mayo. But rather than being a sleepy existence, it’s been anything but for the 50-something mother of The Teenager (15), and The Tominator, seven (oh, and there’s the artist husband Niall, too). It’s chaos, as she explains every week in her hilarious and touching column...

THE Irish summer — finally we are actually having one. This burst of ludicrously hot weather augers well for our first proper, hot, fabulous summer in a long time, but as a hardened Western dweller, I can’t help waking up every day to sunshine and thinking — this could be ‘it’ for the rest of the year.

After all, I live on one of the most stunningly beautiful, deserted coastlines in Europe. If God gave us good weather as well, we would have long since turned The Wild Atlantic Way into high-rise Benidorm.

So, here’s my terrible confession: I’m not a hot weather person. Of course, like everybody else, I say I love it. How I long for a ‘good’ summer. If only we had a few weeks of sunshine every June/July wouldn’t we be in seventh heaven?

Except — although I do love a crisp, sunny, spring day to run about in — hot sun beating down on my head from 10am till 7pm makes me look like a large hat tumbling mysteriously down the road on a pile of washing. I have been hot and bothered, crumpled and cross by 9am.

Even though I’ve been told it’s sticking around, it’s still ‘all systems go’ here to get outside to enjoy it.

For the first few days there was a distinct holiday atmosphere, as work was postponed and all chores were dropped as everyone rushed outdoors to get what might be the only good bit of sun this year.

However, I find this pressure to ‘enjoy’ the hot weather terribly stressful, especially when it falls on the weekend. During the week there is no option — the sunshine is lovely but I have to work. But I also make plans for the weekends; trips to Lidl, wardrobe tidying, that type of thing. Not that I actually do half of the things that I plan, but nonetheless, sunshine Sundays mess with my downtime aspirations to ‘get stuff done’.

The only time I can truly relax is when the house is tidy and it’s lashing rain and there is no alternative than to sit in front of the telly.

So when I woke up on Sunday and saw it was, again, a scorcher, there was no way of getting away from it — we would all have to go outdoors.

I planned to sweep up the crunched autumn leaves from the side passage, locate the sun umbrella, plant the patio that has been sitting glaring at me for the past three months.

By the time I had got myself downstairs, I had mentally roped my husband in to a day of hard labour, shed clearing and bed-digging.

The alternative to a day of closing our eyes to the ‘jobs-to-do’ garden list is to pack up the car and spend the day on the beach. The problem with that is it involves leaving the house, picnics, sand in the car and, worst of all, it will mean I have to get dressed instead of just putting a bra on under my Penney’s beach kaftan and enjoying a day of greasy-haired slobbing which I was looking forward to.

In any case, we do have a garden and under-used outdoor furniture. So I made a pact with myself to not do any awful jobs but spend the day enjoying the garden and the freshly mowed lawn, which my heroic husband put down a month after we moved in last year. Maybe it was time to enjoy it. We would all spend the day outside.

‘We are spending the day in the garden,’ I announced after making them all bacon sandwiches and bringing them outside. They grabbed one each and brought them back into the kitchen. I followed them back in, disgusted.

‘Look at this weather,’ I said. ‘We should all be outside!’ As if to make a point, I went upstairs and came down in white linen trousers.

All three boys looked back at me, faces numb with overheated torpitude. The teen grunted, the husband went for the paper and the youngest reached for his iPad.

‘Well, I’m going to enjoy the sunshine,’ I announced and sat outside on a chair.

A wasp landed in my tea. Newspaper ink melted on my white linen. An earwig dropped from the depths of the never-before-opened patio umbrella. It was — Too. Damn. Hot. By midday, we were all spread out inside with cold drinks and crisps, watching a family movie.

Finally, the sunshine has given me an excuse to relax and have the perfect Sunday. Inside.