It's A Dad's Life: When I was a kid, our holidays down the country alternated between visiting grandparents in Co Galway and Co Mayo. These journeys took on average four or five hours respectively, sometimes a little longer if we stopped to sample the culinary delights of Harry's in Kinnegad or The Prince of Wales in Athlone.
Those hours were the longest of my ruddy-cheeked life, crammed in the back of the Mirafiori, squabbling with the sisters over who got red in the "count the cars" game, and praying my bladder would stay the course.
My Dad had told me to go before getting in the car, but I had ignored him. I always regretted it.
On the Easter weekend I gathered up my own troops and we took off to west Cork. We left at around two on Thursday afternoon, arriving at our destination shortly after 10pm. Eight hours in the saddle with a pair of young kids in tow. We had a couple of mishaps along the way; toilet breaks so the elder child could marvel in her best Malory Towers accent at the filth of public conveniences and a quick bout of projectile vomiting aimed directly at the back of my head (the younger showing remarkable accuracy and malevolence), but nothing that would have kept us off the road for more than 60 minutes. That left seven hours to cover around 200 miles: a remarkable testament to Ireland's roads and traffic situation.
An hour after we had left home we were sitting on the North Circular Road staring blankly at the lights in Phibsboro and I was thinking I could probably still hit my house with a good spit. Fortunately, I was occupied with chewing through the steering wheel but the kids were showing the strain.
The first "when are we gonna be in Cork?" had been chirped as we backed out of the driveway, to be replaced with "is this Cork?" as we snailed past Mountjoy.
Eventually we hit walking pace, then a canter. We made Newbridge at 4.30pm and took a break, the poor nippers presuming we had arrived. At this stage, visualising wailing and gnashing of teeth all the way down the N7, I feared the children would exercise their natural instinct to rail at captivity. Missus was playing a stormer, pulling out all the stops, infusing solids and liquids with regularity and fulfilling the role of chief entertainment officer with some panache. But I didn't think she could hold on. I was sure we were doomed.
Then a strange thing happened. Somewhere on the Munster border the elder got a burst of creativity and kept everyone entertained with a stream of stories, rhymes, jokes and songs. Missus and I were exchanging glances, wondering what was going on and how long it could last. Suddenly, younger was joining in and we had a pre-verbal Morecambe and Wise situation in the back seat, the two of them cracking each other up. The younger can't even talk yet, but she wasn't letting that minor handicap stop her. You could have handed her a mike and called her Jerry Seinfeld, she thought she was so hilarious.
Eventually they wisecracked each other out and nodded off. The tension had eased and we prayed they would kip all the way. Which they did, before waking on arrival and expecting to be entertained into the night because apparently "there's no bedtime on holiday".
It struck me while we were away: do short breaks have the same restorative powers on kids as on adults? I say this because elder got quite philosophical at one point. I know all four-year-olds ask a phenomenal amount of questions and some shake you to the core (past highlights include "why do we have blood?" and "what's under the footpath?") but this one seemed to have a depth to it, perhaps brought on by relaxation.
She had insisted on my bringing her to the loo and, while sitting there, face scrunched in concentration, she asked "Daddy, when you're in heaven, do you have to go to the toilet?"
That's something I've often wondered myself.
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