Back to the (cooked?) books

As we all head back from summer holidays, Kathy Sheridan - who will watch her daughters' return to school with a heavy heart - …

As we all head back from summer holidays, Kathy Sheridan - who will watch her daughters' return to school with a heavy heart - reflects on the summer that wasn't. But maybe it's time we took a leaf out of the Austrians' book and stopped moaning about everything under - and including - the sun

The rain has stopped bucketing down. The last few stragglers are lingering on the beach. There is just enough light in the evenings to give an intimation of summer. These dog-days are all the sweeter for being the last of those dreamy hours when everything seems possible, when the mind floats free from its moorings and making a living sketching portraits in Toulouse seems entirely feasible.

It's so easy to forget the bad times, the relentless drenchings, the mean-spirited hecklers, the carpers, the cynics. So easy to overlook the inspiring performances of our elected leaders, sundry Elan directors and Eamon Dunphy, who managed, heroically, to carry on holidaying in spite of it all.

So let's take a moment to remember.

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History will record that the poor turn-out in the May elections was related to the deluge, the one that came down with peculiar vehemence on polling day and never ceased thereafter.

It will also show that the deluge was not responsible for Roy Keane's moaning, because that - at least for us - began in sunny Saipan. But it too never ceased thereafter.

Entire parishes, professional reputations and life-long friendships were shredded in debate over the Keane versus McCarthy question. And the British media began to append the adjective, "the Irishman", to Keane's name with uncommon enthusiasm.

But dang if the FAI didn't finally say out loud what a few of us have been saying for years (if in more robust language): that soccer matches, give or take a World Cup final, are not "of major importance to society".

In search of a more stimulating alternative to peering up footballers' fundaments, we turned to the president of the US. Sure enough, there he was on the golf course, clubs in hand, pronouncing for CNN on the catastrophic Iraqi, um, threat: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive."

The man who swears he can chew pretzels and watch a game at the same time (without falling off the sofa and hitting his head) also found a new hero, we heard, in one Toby Keith, composer of the C&W smash, Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American). Chorus: "Oh, justice will be served/And the battle will rage/This big dog will fight if you rattle his cage/You'll be sorry that you messed with the US of A/Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/It's the American way."

So can you blame George, fresh from the manly, sweaty task of clearing the underbrush on his ranch in clammy Crawford, Texas, for sniping at the "white-wine sipping" Clintons, hanging out in that wimpy Martha's Vineyard? For expansion upon George's awesome insights, we looked to his British counterpart. Say what you like about Tony, but you won't find him playing golf. Nope, there he was on a drenching, four-day "holiday" in Cumbria, huddled miserably under an umbrella with Cherie.

So, Tony, about this Iraqi business . . . ? "I think this is holiday time," he said, a trifle pained.

"We are on holiday, for goodness sake," exploded Cherie, before suffering a miscarriage and the added ordeal of having her sex-life, religion, spin-doctoring capability and mental capacity dissected by patronising twerps. The Blairs then headed off to a French village (christened Dullsville by those deliriously exciting British media types) for a proper holiday.

And yes, I know what you're thinking. It wouldn't happen here. This is where we Irish get to show our true colours, our basic niceness. This is why Bertie could amble around Galway city and the races without getting a boot in the ass from some fierce defender of the second national language, having absorbed the twaddle about the "moderation in the increases" or "adjustments".

On the contrary, they showered him with goodwill while he and Celia beamed for Ireland, the media and one another, triggering endless speculation about what the relentlessly happy pair would do with the Claddagh rings presented to them. (And yes, there were suggestions in these parts. Unprintable.)

Meanwhile, the draught Bass for the Boss was specially bought in to Kerry, to which he repaired for yet more adulation from the grass roots before adjourning finally to the loftier environs of Ashford Castle in the company of the Nice Treaty, some dodgy, beige tracksuit bottoms and the relentlessly cheerful Celia.

But credit where credit is due, at least he took his breaks in the country he governs.

When the French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin advised his cabinet to be moderate and stick to mainland France for the holidays, he got the metaphorical two fingers from his own president, Monsieur Chirac.

Not for Jacques the ingenious, two-mile, temporary beach in Paris, its own Malibu-sur-Seine, constructed for a knockdown €1.5 million, with 150 lorry-loads of sand and a great smattering of potted palms. Merde sur that. So while his prime minister showed willing by walking in the Alps and stumping up for lunch with Tony Blair, Jacques was lolling around luxury hotels in the Indian Ocean, for upwards of three weeks.

So unlike our own Minister for Tourism, who left bought-in-Bass country to take his ease in, um, Mauritius. Oops. But let's be fair. How was John O'Donoghue to know that he was going to be catapulted from Justice to Tourism when he booked that passage to paradise way back? Life's a beach, isn't it? And who could begrudge Liam Lawlor his break in Sicily, not only dining on lobster, according to the Sunday Tribune, but singing - it reported rather snootily - Joe Dolan songs?

Well see here, you horrid little D4 heads, Joe was the soundtrack of our youth and it wasn't all about white-washed gables and good-lookin' women either. A particular favourite was Tar and Cement: "The town that I came from was quiet and small/We played in the meadows where the grass grew so tall/In summer the lilac would grow everywhere/The laughter of children would float in the air." Now all of it is gone, goes the poignant chorus. All tarred and cemented, like so many Liffey Valleys.

But enough about the politicians. What about us? Well, upwards of a million of us managed to get out of the country this summer, by all accounts, and with the help of the transparent little euro, the thrumming backbeat of the season was the confirmation of what we always suspected. Ireland is Rip-Off Central.

Another was the perennial parental whinge about the school holidays being too long. Who are these people? For heaven's sake, go campaign for decent amenities - a Malibu-sur-Mullingar, peut-etre? - but first reflect on one journalist's description of Soham in recent days: "No ice-cream van chimes. No children to be spotted walking alone. The huge sky over the surrounding flatlands yielded no sound at all."

As I read those words, a radio ad penetrated the air, starring a couple of children squabbling in headwreckingly whiny English accents, in a tone intended to capture the sensation of hot needles being stuck in your eyeballs, all of it designed to convey the torture of a typical family holiday. Then the proferring of a smug solution, a Harry Potter book, to make children seen and not heard.

The Daily Telegraph was at it too, in a leader no less, encapsulating long holidays as "that endless pressure to have fun, to plan the perfect day, to entertain your children; nothing to do, no adversity to overcome, trapped amid family squabbles".

Strange people. For this family, the end of summer and a whole era was signalled when, entirely unbidden, and for the first time in her 17-year-old history, my daughter excavated her own school uniform, took it to the cleaners and made sure it was collected. For the whiners, this undoubtedly would be an occasion for rabid rejoicing. But my heart is unaccountably heavy.

On Monday,it will be the end of summer. Strappy little tops will be discarded for lumpish uniforms. Easy chats and late-night movies yield to long, dull hours of homework and early alarms on bleak, dark mornings.

As for the adults, what could be laughed away in those long, summer days must finally be confronted. Ways must be found to keep up with the VHI, the college fees, the ESB, the TV licence and all the other stuff, while trying not to brood on what other "adjustments" the language-torturers have neglected to tell us about.

So, Bertie, what ya gonna do? Come clean? Tell it like it is? Oh get a grip. The snorts of the spinners can be heard in Schull.

Get with the programme, Boss. Raise your sights, take a leaf from the Austrian Advertising Association's book. It is running a campaign against complaining. Moaning about the economy is driving business into the ground, it says, so it is using bill-boards, TV commercials and beer mats to tell people to stop being so pessimistic. Vienna should be declared a grumble-free zone, they say. Imagine that in Dublin 2. Or 4. Or 6 . . .

"Austrians love to moan and complain," says the bright spark responsible, one Mariusz Jan Demner, "but it's simply not the case that the economy is in a bad state."

Hats off, Mariusz. There are similarities and we think you're on to something. Okay, so your idea would reduce the entire country to silence but that's something we'll just have to be brave about. Perfect, Boss, eh? Super.

Well I'm off now. To do portraits around Toulouse? Don't be ridiculous. To set up my own PR company, actually. Super.