Editor’s letter
Mind your craw.” Yes, now I know it’s officially summer. This is just one of the phrases that you grow up thinking is totally normal, along with “mar dhea” (mar-a-yah), until you say them to someone else later in life and they look at you like you’ve two heads. These are two of my mum’s favourite expressions. Your craw, according to JuJu (that’s my mum), is the skin on your chest left exposed when you wear a V-neck T-shirt. According to Google, it’s part of the digestive tract of a bird, but what do they know? While mar dhea is a great Irish expression meaning, “Oh come on, who are we kidding?” It can be sprinkled fairly liberally into any conversation: “I bought myself a lovely bag on the beach, Hermès – mar dhea”; “he promises not to be late – mar dhea”. Pithy and melodic, the age-old phrase tends to draw blank looks from younger friends and colleagues.
But I see now, 20 years too late, that although JuJu might have sounded a bit bats, “mind your craw” was in fact solid advice. I now fork out a small fortune on AlumierMD Brightening Serum and microneedling to try and reduce the cluster of sun damage spots on my fortysomething chest. Thankfully, I’ve come a long way from the Carrot Sun (SPF 10) tan accelerator days of my youth. On one particular college summer holiday to the Greek island of Ios, I slathered my pale-skinned body in the stuff (including my face!) and ended up with a dose of sunstoke that saw me spend the rest of the holiday indoors. That pretty much put paid to that nonsense.
As I write, I have the contents of my two “summer” drawers tipped out onto the bed, getting ready to pack for our annual girls’ weekend away, the same pals who drove across the island on a sketchy scooter all those years ago in Ios to fetch me a doctor. This time, though, we’ve upgraded things a bit. We’re off to Palma to enjoy the “cobbled streets, honey-hued old buildings and gorgeous beaches” that Jillian Bolger praises in her travel piece on page 143, and we’ll be upgrading the Ios Jell-O shots with chilled glasses of pale-salmon-coloured rosé at the Purobeach club. But the essence of the craic will be the same. Granted, we’re less likely to be found hanging around outside the supermarket in thrall to the guy in the group who turns out to play the guitar and looks really good with a tan. You can, in fact, be guaranteed we won’t pay the slightest bit of attention to anyone else.
These parasol-shaded chats sum up some of my favourite summer moments, and the great thing is you don’t need to jump on a plane for them. An evening-sun-warmed front step will do just fine, faces raised, eyelids closed – à la our beautiful French Canadian model Melizanne overleaf – soaking up the promise of a decent Irish summer and friendships forged to withstand all weathers.
Lizzie Gore-Grimes Editor-in-chief
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