During a stroll on a beach I know very well, I ended up somewhere I’d never been... A case of style over substance
LOU Reed had put it best. It was such a perfect day and, for once, I took the time and made the effort to acknowledge it. For me, that was something of a breakthrough.
It was one of those irresistible charmers from last week. There have been so many this past while that they have somehow blended together, bleached by the sunshine into one long, glorious summer blur.
I was in Wexford and went for a wander with no preordained route in mind. Time was my own. Being the most precious commodity there is, I had no intention of wasting it.
The walk could take meandthedog wherever chance wished. No questions asked.
I found myself taking the short, narrow and nettled cliff walk south of Ballymoney beach to Seafield strand on the other side of the cove.
From there, we rambled towards distant Courtown, stopping for a swim in a tranquil sea which held none of its traditional June sting.
Afterwards, lazing on the rocks while Lola worried some stones with the sort of persistence that only a terrier could sustain, I passed thetimeofdaywith other casual strollers as they ambled by.
I had no urge to move on and no reason to either.
It was around then I realised that this was a place I had never been before.
Not the beach itself, which I know very well, but that space in my headthatI had always refused to go to or even acknowledge. I was in the moment.
That’s what I’ve heard it being called. I was, despite myself, practising mindfulness.
This is not in my nature. I am generally fretting, reconsidering or regretting something I have already done or worrying about what I should do next. The moment I am in, known as the present, is just a stepping stone between those competing opposites and I seldom give it the time of day. Daft, considering you can’t change the past, while the future – as John Lennon so cleverly put it – is what happens when you’re making other plans. Eventually, I allowed the spell to be broken, brushed myself free of sand and shifted my bones. Ithrewastoneand Lola punctured the sound barrier in pursuit of it.
But now I understand something I didn’t before.
Never too late to teach an old dog new tricks.
Home to roost?
WE sat out in the garden late into the warm night, sipping wine and talking nonsense.
Five couples in all, ranging in age from the mid-fifties through to those edging reluctantly into their sixties.
It was loud and giddy at times but as the evening began to wind down, we all became a bit more contemplative and mellow. And serious.
The conversation turned to our offspring, for no particular reason, and a common thread unwound.
All of our children are grown up, either in college or have emerged out the other side.
We readily agreed these maligned millennials of ours are brave, resilient and resourceful in ways that we never had to be.
But these attributes and tools can’t compensate for common burdens, like short-term contracts, low wages and a rental market driven psychotic by a supply crisis.
So some are still at home, desperate for their independence, privacy and freedom, but unable to afford it.
At the same time, mum and dad wouldn’t mind a bit of independence, privacy and freedom of their own.
But perhaps our view is skewed. A new London School of Economics study suggests that boomerang kids enrich families and strengthen inter-generational bonds. We’ll have to reconvene over more wine to see how that might work.
THE humble radish is set to replace the avocado as the new superfood. Not because it has qualities that the avocado can’t match, claim analysts Kantar Worldpanel, but because it looks good on Instagram.
It’s a great time to be alive.