DEAR DIARY – We’re in the early hours of Saturday morning, I’ve had three pints and few shots, and I feel nice.
left Páidí Ó Sé’s bar in Ceann Trá a few hours ago, but the false sense of confidence I drank there hasn’t yet faded and I see no issue with taking to the internet to share my thoughts on gymnastics with the Twitterati.
Thanks to whoever it is that’s doing the commentary at the Olympics tonight/this morning, I know that Ukrainian Yevhen Yudenkov’s pommel-horse routine was only fair. His legs were slightly separated at times as he did hand stands and spinning and stuff, and that’s a bad thing according to your man on the television. I’m going to steal this man’s opinion and share it on the internet.
The Olympic Games is the biggest sporting event on the planet, and it’s also the weirdest. Once every four years, I feign a deep knowledge of table tennis, wrestling, synchronised diving, and much, much more, and while I don’t care a damn for any of these sports during those great, big, four-year spaces between Olympiads, they consume my life at Olympic time.
I’m most looking forward to dressage and shouting abuse at horses for artificially raising their front legs. I don’t know what that is or why it’s considered a faux pas, but the commentators will let me know, and I’ll be livid when it happens. Unless the horse is from a country I don’t like.
I might go to bed now because the street skateboarding is on tomorrow night, and I’ve more interest in that than gymnastics. While the athletes at the Olympics must pace themselves, so too must the viewers, especially when the time difference between Lios Póil and Tokyo is so obscene.
I’m on a boat, looking at dolphins. This is fantastic.
DEAR DIARY – I’m on a boat.
Last night, I watched Kerry women Monika Dukarska and Aileen Crowley rowing at the Olympics. Today, it’s me who’s on the high seas, and while a motor is driving us along, I think I’m nearly as tired as the two Killorglin rowers were 18 hours ago.
That’s because I’m on David Flannery’s boat tour, he provides a packed schedule, and you’d be amazed how much the day takes out of you.
I’m after seeing a heap of puffins and dolphins, and no matter how many times you spot those mammals jumping about in the water, the excitement never loses its gloss.
There were a few seals around as well. They’re fascinating too, although I don’t trust them. They stick their heads just above the water to size you up, but if they catch you looking back at all, they’re gone. I just find something very unwholesome about that.
Our trip around the Blasket Islands and into some of the most beautiful nooks and crannies on the Kerry coast takes about three hours in total, and these were three hours spent well in the company of my sisters, cousins, cousins’ cousin, cousin’s fiancée, and cousin’s girlfriend. I hope I’ve left nobody out.
I must extend my thanks to my cousin, Laura Moriarty, for arranging this voyage and last night’s pints in Páidí Ó Sé’s. We’re also going for a few drinks in Paul Geaney’s tonight. It’s all very high-octane stuff for The Diary, and I hope my reader will be able to cope with the change of pace, but if they’ve stuck with me over the past 16 months, I think they might be here to stay.
When your nose fails and you miss the Munster final.
DEAR DIARY – It’s Sunday, and my sinuses are at me, so much so that I can’t even enjoy Kerry handing out a caning to our friends in Cork. The Munster final has passed me by because I’ve spent most of it blowing my nose.
My nose is so bad that there are no tissues left, and I’ve had to move on to napkins that my mother had placed on the kitchen table. I’m sure they were put there for decoration and not for my nose’s benefit, so I’m equally sure that she’ll be very cross at me when she notices they’re all in the bin now. They were yellow and black and really looked the part a few minutes ago.
The napkins are gone, but my nose is still burning off some dirty diesel, so I’ve retrieved a roll of Andrex. It’s not the kind of thing you want to be seen carrying around the house with you, but this is my life now. I think of all the times that my nose was grand, and how I took that freedom for granted.
The Munster final is now long over, but it’ll soon be on the telly again because it’s time for The Sunday Game, and my nose is no better than it was during the day. It’s then that I decide to take a Solpa-Sinus. I heard that Paudie Clifford had a great game, and I’ll be damned if my sinuses prevent me from seeing him tear Cork apart twice in one day. I’m going down the medication route.
Within 15 minutes, my nose is fine, bringing six agonising hours and the saddest period in modern Irish history to an end.
It’s been a bad day for me, therefore the world, but I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Tune in for more from this award-winning reporter next week.