That lovely summer feeling of seeing cars parked in a field amid the buttercups; the sun shining; swallows swooping, writes Kevin Myers.
In six months' time we will wonder, was there such a sublime day, such sublime weather, such a sun-kissed time, with Ireland looking so green, so wonderful? All so dream-like, yet none so dream-like as the international Equestrian Centre at Kill rising from the rubble of what a fortnight ago looked like Stalingrad: a triumph of hope and determination over common sense and caution.
Kill has been home to the horse-riding dimension of the games: how wonderful that the first competitors to test its numerous fine arenas should be Special Olympians. They deserve this magnificent venue - and they deserve the large happy crowds that urged them on in a centre which in large part owes its existence to the late Kathleen Flannelly, dead these seven years, but living still in the delirious smiles of athletes who could count themselves as among the most unfortunate in the world; but this week, the most fortunate.
In the trail-ride competition, the riders have to complete a circuit with various obstacles before finally opening a gate and riding their horse through it. James Farrell from New Zealand was halted at the gate; his horse glaring obstinately at it, as if eye-power alone could cause it to open. Hundreds of people around the arena were determined to prove the horse's theory, and their own, right as they focused on the hinges, and silently wished the gate to swivel about them: Day One of the wizards' class in the Lower Remove at Hogwarts.
James relied on no such magic, but took his horse round in a circle, repeatedly, until he could lay a hand on the gate and push it open. He did, and then rode through, a glorious smile of joy on his face; and the sun rose in the middle of the night in Auckland, and all of Wellington smiled in its sleep.
You can say that the games are an exercise in hypocrisy, and one that is just conscience-salving. Even if this were true, is it not better to be inconsistent in our neglect of our duties to others? Is it better to be unfailingly delinquent, or only partially so? Is there not a modicum of redemption in the tokens of goodness that we do to ease our consciences? Moreover, might not that modicum lead you to meet and see people you might never have encountered in your entire life - good people, modest people, who lower their eyes at the thought of publicity, and whose sense of duty has brought these games to us, and also revealed a goodness we would never otherwise have seen? There are too many in these games to acknowledge even a fraction of them: 500 at Kill alone, all in colour-coded uniforms like the deck crew on an aircraft carrier.
But these are the visible ones; behind every athlete, across the world, are vast armies of carers - parents who brought these deprived ones into the world, coaches who gave of their time to bring light into darkened worlds, friends who helped them as they learned to run though they might barely be able to walk, or held them on horseback as they discovered the sport which liberated them from the tyranny of intellectual limitation.
Who minded and guided and helped and encouraged Jane Spillane, to whose other afflictions one may add the further penalty of partial blindness? How many good people through her life have silently helped her on her way? Their reward was to see the glow of jubilation on her face as she pushed open the gate and took her horse through the gap and past the finishing post.
The organisation at Kill has been a revelation: effortless, calm, genial.
Five hundred hanging baskets, 87 horses, most of them test-ridden by the splendid Shirley MacDermott, all of them immaculately groomed. We know that most of the athletes will not notice how turned-out their mounts are, but of course that's not the point. The heart and the soul of these games is respect. It is respect for those whose horizons were limited by cruel misfortune, and which their sports enable them to broaden; it is a declaration of a common humanity which unites those who cannot help themselves, and those who help them, and those who normally don't do very much for other people at all. It is a declaration of the sort of civilisation which, if we do not belong to yet, we still - if only fitfully - aspire to.
When in six months' time, we think back upon this summer, and wonder if those amazing days of such sublime weather actually occurred, it would be nice to think our guests cast their minds back also. Let us hope, then, that the special athletes with us at the moment will this coming winter look back to this special week, and cherish it as the source of the most perfect memories of their entire lives, memories they can, amid the winter's darkness, caress in their minds like a precious jewel.
May they in their far-away homes harbour this fond delusion: that there is actually a paradise on this earth, a land of blue skies which knows only peace and generosity, warm welcomes, laughter and happy smiling crowds; a place where wishes all come true and athletic glory abounds; where the sun unfailingly glitters upon the medals festooned about your neck on the winners' rostrum. Yes, there is such a place: and it is called Ireland.