ADAM HARVEYrounds up the latest travel gadgets
** Enforce a holiday blackout on wide-awake children with a Baa Baa Blind (€34.99, www.cleverclogs.ie), a lightweight dark cloth that sticks to windows with suction cups. It beats turning the apartment upside down to find a blanket to hang over the curtain rod. The blinds measure 200cm by 135cm. Use it upon your return to block out the sight of the Irish summer stormclouds.
** A jellyfish deterrent in a sunscreen? What’s next, shark-proof deodorant? Actually, Lifesystems sunscreen (€14.99, Great Outdoors, Dublin 2, www.greatourdoors.ie) isn’t as silly as it sounds. The sunscreen doesn’t scare away the jellyfish – the creatures don’t have a brain, or the capacity to change course away from a swimmer – but tricks it into not firing the thousands of tiny poisonous darts that line its tentacles, which normally activate when they make contact with fish, or flesh. The deterrents mimic the chemical reaction caused by contact with another jellyfish. That’s the theory, anyway. Try it with a lightweight Irish stinger before you do battle with a tropical box jellyfish. The downside: you’d need to smother it over every part of your body that could come into contact with a tentacle.
** Lighten your cable load with a retractable USB cable (€4.45, www.proporta.com) with interchangeable heads for linking phones and hand-held games to your computer’s USB port. Each clip-on head is also €4.45.