With the Dubs in Croke Park and the sky gone all blue

It's a Dad's Life: The ghost in our house seems to have vacated the premises. He must be on a beach somewhere, soaking up rays, because the younger is back to enjoying her bedroom, writes Adam Brophy

Thank the gods for summer. Croke Park is in full swing and the Dubs are on song. They may not yet have faced a troublesome team but that makes no difference to the area between Glasnevin, East Wall and the city centre on match day. You cannot move for blue, and when the sun is shining and the team is winning, that blue feels glamorous and exciting.

When I walk out my front door and look left I'm faced with the Canal End of Croker. It's an incongruous monolith of modernism bearing down on one of the oldest-looking parts of the city, and it's the heartbeat of the place. Every Sunday for these few months we are flooded with supporters from all corners of the island.

When you're walking to the shop for your milk and paper you push your chest out while in among them because, y'know, you're not a visitor, you're lucky enough to live here all the time. Most of those supporters are probably just happy after matches to find their cars still in the places they left them, but that's because they don't realise how special this part of town is.

And there's my problem. I've only gone and fallen in love with North Strand and Ballybough (I never thought I would utter that sentence) just when the kids are crying out for space, greenery, rolling pastures, farmyard animals, camogie at dawn and Famous Five-style rural adventures.

We have friends in Kildare who manage the commute into town if not quite without a whimper of complaint, without losing their minds. They have big houses and their kids can run wild outside. That would be manageable, but if we were to move I think it would have to be further afield.

Every August we spend at least two weeks hanging out in west Cork with a couple of sets of in-laws and having a blast. I get provoked to swim in the icy Atlantic by the taunts and jibes of the Missus's nature-loving parents. The Rugrats go nuclear with their cousins to the point of Exorcist-type, head-spinning excitement. We play a bit of golf, do some kayaking, and eat and drink like kings.

Every year we return to the capital windswept and sunkissed and wonder aloud on the N7 if we could manipulate our lives so we could live down there all the time. But every year as we approach the lights of the city, I breathe a sigh of relief that we're home. The first morning we're back I feel like cartwheeling to the shop for my loaf of bread just because it's so close that I can. If I trained for a couple of weeks.

A publisher friend of mine loves the big cities of the world - London, Paris and in particular, New York. I think he loves the stories of these cities, their grandeur, their oldness, their many tales. Over pints of stout a couple of nights ago, he was telling me about an experience with a barfly in New York. This guy was extolling the virtues of the city that never sleeps when my friend asked him just what was so great about the place. Your man fixed him with a slightly woolly stare and pointed out to the street, replying in a thick Brooklyn drawl, "it's all out theyah". That was all he needed to say.

There's an off-licence on Ballybough Road called The Vine Tree. It is legendary. It sells booze at a reasonable rate, food, domestic products, industrialstrength cleaners and does a fine line in homespun philosophy. Like the bar in Cheers, in The Vine Tree everybody , in The Vine Tree everybody  knows everybody's name. When the kids are old enough to ask, "Daddy, why did we never realise our rural dream?" I'm going to point to the Vine Tree and tell him "it's all in there"