A curious weekend of light and shenanigans is on the horizon
Country Living with Francis Farragher
Almost in the blink of an eye since we bade farewell to Christmas and the New Year has Midsummer’s Day crept up on us and while there’s been no talk of heatwaves or temperature records, the year so far has overall been quite benign.
Even allowing for modest temperatures and the regular sprinkling of showers over recent days, Midsummer is still quite a wondrous time of the year and especially if clear skies persist through the night-time hours.
Whether it be the growing number of Summers under my belt or my sleeping idiosyncrasies, I do have a tendency to wake regularly enough around 3am and on a clear night, one of the great wonders of the season of light is to peer out through an east facing window, and to experience that sense of non-darkness.
There are mates of mine on the Summer silage trail who do have mixed emotions about the long days of June often with the pressures of ‘getting the job done’ only giving them a four or five-hour window of sleep.
Such work practices probably go with the season and following on from Midsummer’s day this Friday, is St. John’s Day, on Monday next, a day that always evokes childhood memories of escorting the early season lambs to the Fair of Abbeyknockmoy where hard deals were done over numerous glasses of porter by men with wizened faces and wellweathered speck caps.
The night before the fair was of course Bonfire Night and in times when the environment was just a big word that no one could understand or spell, the competition was always intense between the rival flame display groups.
It does seem like such an anachronism now that the build-up to the bonfires could always be judged on the size of the pile of old tyres that had been assembled over the previous days.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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