A DAD'S LIFE:Our children think the future is unavoidable
ALL RIGHT snow, enough. Ice, back off. I’d had my fill after a day, the kids got a kick out of it for the guts of a week. But a week of lockdown is a long time and, even with a ready-made playground on the doorstep, after seven days they wanted other faces to look at. Other faces to crash snowballs into.
During our house arrest, like the rest of the nation, we became obsessed with news and weather reports. For the first time ever, as a family we gathered in front of the 6.01 bulletin every night to “Ooh” at satellite pictures and reports of hero farmers tractor-pulling trucks over the brows of hills.
We particularly enjoyed interviews with people who had slipped on ice and hurt themselves. They managed to convey their indignation in such a way that you would almost believe they were upset they could not now get to work, while at the same time insinuating they would, somehow, sue the snow.
But my favourite was the Polish girl accosted, bemused, on her way out of Heuston Station in Dublin. The interviewer suggested this must all be quite normal to her. She nodded, obviously wondering what all the fuss was about, saying, “What is different is that the whole country stops”.
From our eyrie atop an icebound hill, trying not to consider leaving the brats outdoors for the night as a viable option, we wondered the same. The Pole then mugged a face at the camera as if to say, “Why are you wasting my time, I have a life to get on with”, and marched on.
Roy Keane is famous, among many things, for stating: “Stupidity is doing the same things and expecting different results.” This phrase has been ascribed to sources as varied as Einstein and the Narcotics Anonymous handbook, and has recently been quoted in Fintan O’Toole’s Enough is Enough. For all that, we remember it because Roy said it.
I like Roy. Not because he was a great footballer (he was, but I’ll never quite understand his stance on Saipan) or an honest manager or because I’m sympathetic to his appearing to spend his days braced for attack from above. He engages me for all those things, but it’s very hard to warm to him. Yet often he states things and you know he’s blown the bluster apart and nailed it. On both Ireland fretting over Thierry Henry’s handball and England’s recent wailing about not getting the 2018 World Cup, he peddled the same message: “Stop crying. Get over it.” And on both he was right.
The other phrase he’s remembered best for is “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”, delivered in the wake of the Saipan drama. And here we sit – literally sit because once again nobody prepared for extreme weather conditions – as the country fails on a spectacular level because preparation was a dirty word when there was land to be rezoned.
If my kids have learned anything by osmosis from the media recently, it’s that beyond the family there is nothing to rely on, any perceived security is a mirage. This is applied from the macro to the micro as our Government blusters to new levels of disaster, our schools and businesses cease to function due to precipitation and our ability to move from A to B is thwarted because of a lack of a natural element – salt.
We need Roy right now. We need him to march back from his Cheshire mansion, muster an army and seize power. We need Roy to back Brian, Enda, John and Eamon into a corner, growl and warn them to button the lip. We need Roy to remind them how to man up.
But getting the country out of the mire wouldn’t be enough. After he’d told the IMF to stick it, brought back the punt and laughed in the face of bondholders, he’d have to head to the schools and reprogramme every child with the belief that we don’t just fall over at the first sign of a mild breeze.
We need Roy to remind us that if you prepare for every eventuality conceivable, there is a possibility that you might be able to deal with a situation you didn’t see coming. Many people are now lamenting the fact that our children are facing jobless futures. Worse than that, I think they are growing up with a belief that that future is unavoidable. It wasn’t and it isn’t. Roy for Il Duce.