Ailish Connellycouldn't help noticing how affluence has fuelled our growing obesity problem, while watching Irish holidaymakers in the Mediterranean.
How was the holiday? Its usually a fairly benign question and one to which we normally prattle off some stock answers. "It was lovely . . . warm, great food, friendly people etc," we mumble. Nothing to get too worked up about. But then we get bamboozled by the intrepid travellers, those whose esoteric tastes drag them to the banks of the Ganges or to the Himalayas in search of their inner shallows, those who are only dying to "share" their unique experiences with you. Two weeks on a Costa would never do.
Well, to each his own, I hear you say. Fair enough, but even contemplating the notion of far-flung holidays leaves me reeling from exhaustion. All that trekking and sweating, not to mention the horrors of trying to accommodate the needs of three children.
I listen and nod away in appreciation of the great adventures these derring do people have . . . and then I book the package holiday and delight in leaving my brain at the departure gates of Dublin airport. Bucket and spades, check. Blockbuster novel, check. Floaty frocks and suncream. Check. No driving, no worries, no hassle, check. It really is a no brainer.
This year we decided on the French campsite holiday. So onto the aging ferry the Normandy (rumour has it its being decommissioned and not a moment too soon. Irish Ferries have a nerve charging the prices they do). We then drove down through France and across to the Mediterranean near the Spanish border. And I discovered that instead of leaving my frazzled brain somewhere by the side of a field of sunflowers, I was sufficiently relaxed to start noticing all sorts of things. The kind of stuff you become immune to at home.
Like, how on earth or when on earth did Irish people become so huge. In girth, I mean. Seriously, enormously fat. There is no point beating around the bush about this. You read it in the papers but somehow its seems like urban myth. Till you go to a campsite, one with excellent facilities and wonderful French theatre, but high-di-high all the same. And everyone is big, bigger and biggest.
Heart attacks on legs. And not just the Paddies. The English and Scottish are eating themselves into an early grave too. There are hints in the media that its poorer people who are the biggest sinners in this regard. Poor them, they know not what they do. But that's not fair, supremely snobbish and just not true. Its across the board. Everyone these days can afford to eat themselves sick. There were gigantic Germans and hefty Dutch. Even, whisper it, fat French people. Oh mon dieu. For the first time ever, I saw overweight French children. This is a serious no no in a country that prides itself on its healthy cuisine. Does anyone remember that book French women don't get fat? Mirelle Guiliano intimated that French women could eat what they wanted and not put on an ounce. Ladies, this will make you feel better. The reason they don't put on weight is because they live on salads. Salads. End of story.
They wouldn't dream of queuing up for the baguettes and croissants and then lashing them back with a couple of cafe au laits. Because that way is hell and damnation and blubber. French women are miniature with no boobs and no bums for a reason. I have this on authority from women friends who live in France.
We may console ourselves that we have bigger bones. Bigger bones my eye. It's because we eat more. Of course we can console ourselves further because living on salads can't be that much fun.
There was a 40-year anniversary party for the campsite with the obligatory "through the ages" slide-show and while the slide-show was running we tried to work out why everyone looked so different, aside from the clothes and the 1960s cars.
A voice from within our party suddenly announced, "its because they are all skinny". She was right, they were all skinny. Skinny, but healthy looking, living on their local diet, no batter burgers, no chips, no super-saturated-fat McFood. It was the time before fast food nation.
I also noticed that Rip-off Ireland is not alone. Rip-off France charges €6.20 for a pint of lager. That's not central Dublin in an uber hip boutique hotel, shoulder to shoulder full of rock stars, but in a holiday resort on the supposedly less expensive side of the Med. And, heretical though this may be, from what I found, the food in Ireland is very often as good if not better than you get in France.
Yes, food there is slightly cheaper and the wine is way way cheaper and better but they do have an expertise and a huge industry and culture of wine making so it should be better and cheaper.
In Ireland our hotels are newer, our hotel rooms are better value than ever and their facilities are now second to none.
We should take a leaf from the French and start telling everyone how great we are, how well we do things. We could stop running ourselves down. We still have one of the highest economic growth rates in the EU.
Someone remarked to me that we are like the Germans were a generation ago, certainly as rich as they were, but more willing to spend. We work hard and play harder. It's no wonder the continentals now offer us a grudging respect, while simultaneously shaking their heads in bemusement at our profligate spending habits and our partying ways. We are no longer the all singing all dancing gombeen men of Europe. Money talks.
There's one thing we do better than most though. When we come across a fellow Irish person we expertly two-step around the four sides of a conversation, till we have winkled out exactly where they are from, who they are related to and where, within six degrees of separation, they fit into our lives.