A DAD'S LIFE:You have to be hardy to enjoy an Irish summer, writes ADAM BROPHY
SUMMER IS about swimming. It’s about convincing yourself going to the beach is the right thing to do, even though it’s 13 degrees, cloudy and the wind’s kicking up to Wizard of Oz levels.
You get there, unload the blankets, thermals, windbreaks and portable barbecues and settle in for a couple of hours picking sand out of your paperback. There is, of course, the obligatory trip to the water’s edge and baptism of ice. In twos and threes, the group will drag themselves seaward. Kids sprint straight in. The rest of us engage in the macho charade.
Sea Alpha Dad (SAD) dives under the first Arctic wave. Sea Beta Dad (SBD) shoots him daggers and thinks of the Grand Prix he’s recording at home. He could be watching it live instead of being sandblasted by a roaring ocean under the pretence that this is summer fun. Enjoy it.
Sea Alpha Mum (SAM), usually SAD’s wife, follows him in to much uproarious banter. The two then defy their natural inclination to shiver their brains out their ears and instead breast stroke out past the break. SBD wants to return to the shelter of the windbreak, but knows he will endure hours of ritual abuse if he does not immerse himself fully for at least seven seconds.
Sea Beta Mum (SBM) stands, water to her knees, ladling handfuls of water over her neck and shoulders, but she seems to actively enjoy the process of self-freezing. She may not plough to the horizon like the other two, but she’ll slowly bear the brunt of the breakers with a smile on her face.
By now, the kids have circled SBD and are cajoling and kicking him in. If he knew he could get away with it, he would forearm smash them all to the floor and march to the pub. But he has to allow them drag him seawards. That is the ritual. That is the law. The kids are gentler with SBM, but they sense SBD’s anguish and annihilate him.
Wetsuits have changed the face of Irish swimming. The kids can now spend a whole day in the water without having to join the fish fingers for half an hour in the oven on return home. Unfortunately though, unless you are a triathlete and “officially” engaged in a training session, the use of wetsuits is not permitted among beach-going adults.
The adult who dares to don protection for his or her dip will have an enjoyable, relaxing time, but afterwards will be mocked to extremes by their mottled, goosepimpled friends and family. They will be denounced for not having engaged in the full experience, the full spiritual revelation that accompanies near-suicide for fun in the Atlantic.
Return from the beach on an Irish holiday evening is usually accompanied by another staple: the summer barbecue. All protective beach gear will be dragged, dripping sand, salt and random beach dog excrement from the car, through the house and left in the shed. There it will languish for 12 months before the next attempt to brave the waters is attempted, forgotten as all focus has turned to cremating carcasses in the open air. The barbecue in the US and Australia is a thing of beauty. Lemony drizzled salads, T-bones, chablis and sun hats. Back home, a barbecue is a spectator sport.
Viewed, like a movie, by the hungry through the kitchen window, the Irish barbecue usually takes place in a postage stamp-sized back garden. The hungry gather inside, stamping feet and blowing hands, encouraging the sea-frozen blood to once again visit extremities, as SAD busies himself in the storm. Left alone to the rain and hail, he perches a Golf Ireland umbrella at a fire hazard angle above the grill, unleashes a half bottle of fuel, cracks a match and proceeds to spread thin pink-skinned sausages and own-brand burgers on the ensuing bonfire.
Inside, the hungry toast Bundy buns, which they fill with ketchup, mayo, lettuce, onions and tomato. They peer through the rain-streaked kitchen window until SAD signals from beneath his tarpaulin weather cover that flesh has been sufficiently crisped. Then, one by one, they dart into the typhoon, Bundies outstretched, to claim their hard-won prize before retreating again to shelter and warm bottles of Kingfisher.
SBD giggles at the scene outside before kicking on the Sky Player, shooing the brats out of the living room and getting tucked into the fish supper he had the sense to pick up on the way home.