Editor’s letter

As I write this letter, things are looking up. The sun is shining intermittently and everyone is talking about staycations — even if it’s just to assert that the term actually means staying in your own home. (If we weren’t going to be dissuaded from calling staying indoors ‘lockdown’, I don’t hold out much hope for calling staying in Ireland plain old ‘holidaying’.)

Staycay or vaycay, you can use this bank holiday weekend to dine al fresco at one of the shacks, trucks and yards that Lucinda O’Sullivan recommends in our food pages. Or perhaps try a ‘daycation’ package at the InterContinental hotel; its general manager, Nicky Logue, shares the loves of his life with us today.

With all of the new freedoms that we’ve gained in recent weeks, it can be easy to forget what we have lost. For more than 1,700 families across the country, Covid-19 took away far more than mere handshakes and pints. We must temper our collective joy to be sensitive to their sorrow.

Writer Roslyn Dee has already learned what it is to find a ‘new normal’ after bereavement. In today’s magazine, she writes about the grief that consumed her after losing her husband Gerry to cancer five years ago. It’s a raw and honest account of loss, but equally a story about appreciating time spent together and of finding hope for the future. A fitting lesson for all of us in these times. ADVERTISING Olga Chambers, tel: (01) 705-5404 email: ochambers@inmsales.ie Noelle Crowley, tel (01) 705-5406 email: ncrowley@inmsales.ie

Cover: Roslyn Dee photographed by Fergal Phillips