My summer clothes are mocking me with dreams of GAA and trips to Kerry

Idid my summer clothes changeover early this year. I love the sunshine too much to wait until May is out before casting a clout, but I don’t usually haul my bag of smaller clothes down from the top of the wardrobe until this weekend.

That’s always a good day – shaking out the bag so that all the bright colours stumble out on to my bed with their promise of warm days and barbecues and outdoor gigs and holidays and Kerry.

But they’re already hanging in my wardrobe with their come hither demeanour; the less exciting warm jumpers and jackets having taken their place in the bag on the top shelf before even April was out.

I’m never sad about putting my winter clothes away – the nature of our inconsiderate climate is such that they stay in my wardrobe for far longer than their frivolous summer counterparts, and I’ve never, ever longed for the day when I can wear two jumpers at the same time again.

Until this year.

The summer clothes came out early because the welcome warm April weather required a pair of shorts. Normally, I’d have fished out the shorts and put the bag back, but since I haven’t worn anything apart from tracksuit bottoms and hoodies since all this started, there didn’t seem much point in keeping a winter wardrobe serviced. So I cleared everything out ahead of the tumbling – and then I kept on clearing.

I am not a person who owns a lot of clothes, but I do have a vast collection of Dublin GAA hoodies and training tops. Call it a lack of imagination on the part of my friends and family, but every birthday and most Christmases adds another top to the rail. I’ve somehow managed to lose my replica jersey, but luckily I have several other lightweight versions of the heavyweight hoodies hanging on my rails.

Put it this way: if the team ever climbed on the bus for Croke Park and realised they’d left their kit bags at home, a quick phone call to me would see them all kitted out.

The Dublin collection is a versatile one, and as such doesn’t feature in the seasonal clear-outs.

But I looked at all those tops, waiting to be called off the bench, and I just couldn’t see any opportunity to wear them in the summer ahead.

No championship games, no pints in the GAA club. And with the Leaving Cert now hovering over the end of July, no dropping into Páidí Ó Sé’s over the August bank holiday weekend in order to wind up the natives from the safety and (temporary) superiority of a navy blue training top. So I put them all in the bag, along with the winter clothes. Then I added my Dublin scarf and hat and my ancient and much envied “f*** Meath” T-shirt – which I was two days away from wearing when the world turned upside down – and banished them to the top of the wardrobe.

And there wasn’t much fun in the tumbling either. All the flimsy tops, recalling occasions of Vitamin D and joy, mocking me with their bright colours and spaghetti straps. At my age, wearing a denim mini skirt is probably an affront to nature most years (though luckily, I don’t care), but now it suddenly seems so woefully inappropriate that I considered putting them (oh yes – there’s more than one) back in the bag and sticking it in the nearest recycling bin (and then sanitising my hands, obviously.)

But I didn’t. I drew the line at ironing the summer collection – I have more than enough ways to waste my time at the moment – but I did hang it all up in the roomy wardrobe.

Maybe it was more in hope than expectation, but hope is a powerful commodity in troubled times. I hope I will wear my short skirts and all my foolish tops before they have to return to their top shelf hibernation, and I pray that some of them will get an airing in Kerry – even if there’s a part of me that expects I’ll have to wear them all at the same time just to get the benefit.

Of course, given that what I miss most about life before the lockdown is being a size 10, the actual chances of me fitting into any of my summer clothes after these endless weeks of mindless grazing and formation drinking will be considerably slimmer than me, but I’ll cross that (hopefully reinforced) bridge when I come to it.

To borrow from one of the women who works in my local shops, on the glorious day when the doors re-open, they’d better be double doors.