An Irish day at the beach

By Barbara Daly - A Woman's View columnist

IRISH summers are generally over before you know it and sometimes even before they have begun.

Just because the children are on holidays and it is July or August does not mean the sun will shine. However, memories are made of more than sunshine and sometimes you just have to go out and pretend it is summer. We Irish are good at that.

I had been watching the weather and today looked like a good day for the beach. At least the early part of the day. Cloud was to creep in later on and even some rain by evening.

I find sometimes by the end of the summer we have had hardly any beach days. We keep meaning to go but somehow it does not happen half enough. This is criminal considering how many beautiful beaches we have in easy reach.

There is nowhere children like more than the beach, especially when they have other children to play with. It is such an easy place to play and for them to have adventures and use their imagination. I could stay all day at the beach if my children are happy.

Anyway back to today. I alerted my neighbour (a mother of three small children) yesterday that today was to be a beach day. Even with all my pre-warning and preparations it was 11.30 a.m. before we were actually ready to leave the house.

Every plastic toy that was capable of digging a hole or carrying sand had to be loaded into the car along with swimming gear, coats (in case the weather changed), suncream, a picnic and sundry other items that are part of the day out.

My neighbour was even later arriving than us. I was beginning to feel slightly panicked and was berating myself for not being ready earlier as the blue skies became more overcast.

We got to the beach, which was busy, and I hauled a mass of buckets and bags to the beach, spread out towels, unpacked the lunch and sure enough I felt the first drops of rain. I plonked myself on a towel and I swore to anyone who could hear me that I was staying and that no amount of rain was going to shift me.

Within an hour the place was packed. The rain came and went and the ever optimistic Irish were not to be deterred. People sat under umbrellas (not the sun variety) on their towels when it rained and emerged as soon as it stopped without ever leaving their spot on the beach.

Through it all not a child complained nor did they even notice the rain. They played and played and made new friends and fell in the water, changed again and got soaked again. We ate bread rolls that were crunchy with sand, drank water from sandy bottles and declared it a great day at the beach.

We laughed at ourselves too as we thought only on a summer’s day in Ireland would you see such a spectacle. No doubt a Spanish beach would be deserted (apart from maybe a few hardy Irish tourists) in this kind of weather. Yet here we were in our droves as though the sun was splitting the stones.

Valiantly ignoring the fact that yet again the Irish weather was mocking our summer plans.

This is what childhood memories are made of in Ireland and long may they continue.