Sugar, Oh Honey-Honey

At the ripe old age of going-on-sixty-two, and with a wretched family medical history like mine, you’re going to at least aspire to try to take some care of yourself. I tried pretty hard last year but then Christmas came and undid every little good thing I’d achieved. After a few months of winter hibernation neglect, I’m back on the metaphorical (only metaphorical) treadmill again. Trying to shed a few of the excess pounds. Trying to be good.

I cherry-pick what I do from overheard wisdoms and Instagram previews of videos I never watch. Walking is my secondary weapon of choice and I get quite a bit of that in every day. It works better, I find, if I can put my mind to it but my mind is invariably elsewhere when I’m walking, up some frosty mountain or nestled in some dim back room.

But my main approach to losing a kilo or three is to lay off the sugary things. I share this dubious advantage with smokers, I guess. If you’re a smoker and you want to do better, health-wise, you have a clear but difficult route. You give up smoking. For me, my baseline copious sugar habit gives me the same thorny pathway to improvement. Lay off the buns.

So I’m doing what I did last year, which seemed to be working. I’m getting some extra mindful steps in, underusing my fixed bike/clothes horse, and cutting out everything sugary that I can find. The upshot is not that I become suddenly svelte or godlike but the weighing scales do move in a satisfactory, but slow, backward direction.

But, man, I miss my sugar.

As a person who never smoked, gets a bit pissed on one bottle of Coors Lite, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t… do anything really, the sweets and chocolate were my vice and my reward and my crutch. If the day was going badly, a Double Decker could smooth out the bumps and if things were going excellently a Fry’s Chocolate Crème might be a just reward. I think most people like sugar but I don’t think most people like it in the same way that I do. My habit goes back to early childhood when I first gained the autonomy to go to the shops by myself. My much-missed brother Michael would send me off for a large bottle of Coke after his day’s work and the accompanying tip would allow me to have some little confectionary boost of my own. Something that was rapidly consumed before I made it back home.

In college, I subsisted on gang packs of biscuit and fizzy drinks and, crucially, annoyingly (now), never gained a pound. I had the constitution of a greyhound and no amount of calorie intake seemed to change that.

But times passed, metabolisms slowed, and the sugar highs started to come with a subtle but steady price. In my mind, aged sixty-one, I am the same lean, mean, word machine that I always was. But the mirror and the scales conspire to tell a different tale.

So here I stand. Sweetless, chocolate-less, fizzy drink less. Trying to seek out and omit every pocket of clandestine sugar that exists in my life. It gets easier… but not all that much.

The petrol station display speaks to me. “You have miles to go before you sleep,” it says, “and a double Mars bar would ease the journey quite a bit, wouldn’t it?” Similarly the sweet aisle of Tesco (as opposed to the lake isle of Innisfree) lays out in front of my trolley as if to say, “would we really all be here if it wasn’t right that you bought at least a few of us and ate us on the way home?”

But I persist. I’ll keep at it, at least until Christmas ’25, when it will probably start to go literally pear shaped again. The benefits of all this denial are slight but not slight enough if you know what I mean. Still, every pound shed feels like a little win. I imagine that I feel better as I go and imagining you feel better is every bit as good as actually feeling better.

But these are the good times and it’s easier to do this kind of thing in the good times. I can give up on the reward sugar, I can give up on the treat sugar.

But the crutch sugar, when it is needed, will surely be the hardest of all.

Sunshine Gesture

(Photo by Ronan Courell)

There’s this gesture that Castlebar people use to each other when it’s been sunny for a few days in a row. It may be universal. I can’t say because I haven’t circumnavigated the world recently to check it out. So, let’s assume that this thing that people do in my County Mayo corner of the world is particular to here, even if it's not.

It’s just a tiny mime, really. One person meets another person on the street. They say hello and then one or other of the people extend both their forearms out to the side, keeping their elbows tight to their waist. Then they turn their hands palm upwards and look briefly skyward. The other person will generally contribute something like, ‘I know’ or ‘Isn’t it great?’ or ‘Long may it last.’ It’s a little pantomime that says, ‘Look at me, I’m holding out my hands and there is actually no rain falling on them. Can you believe it?’

Other countries get sunshine, obviously, but there aren’t many places where it’s arrival and persistence is celebrated quite so universally as it is here.

Here in the West of Ireland, we don’t usually get weeks of continuous sunshiny days. We do okay, the weather is generally mild and not too brutal, except in the very depths of winter. But summers can be drizzly and cloudy and a bit dull sometimes, so the arrival and persistence of some sunshine is an event worth remarking on and even performing a little skit about.

We’ve just had a few weeks of straight sunshine and there’s no question it raises the spirits. People sit out on the grass on the Mall (which is like a village square, unusual in Ireland) and stretch their white legs out. One prominent shopkeeper runs her store from the seat of her moped on the street outside the shop. She goes in when someone wants to buy something and chats to everyone that passes when her wares are not required. Outer layers of clothing are abandoned by everyone throughout the town and, of course, the weather is celebrated in practically every single discussion that is held.

For my part, I give up the umbrella that I nearly always carry. People remark on it. “We must be in for a long spell; you haven’t got your brolly with you.”

This past few weeks have seen a lovely spell of sunshine and warmth. The trees and birds have responded in admirable fashion.

This morning? Well, it’s drizzling once again. I hold up my palm and droplets fall onto it. My phone says there’s a 40% chance of precipitation, at least that is what I think it says. I’m never entirely sure. Whatever the phone app is saying, there’s a dark cloud looming out behind the clothesline and I think that 40%, whatever it means, may be a little bit optimistic.

Never mind. We had joy, we had fun, as the old song goes. And the sunshine will come back again one day soon.

In this we hope and trust.

Some Moments from Lillie and Enda’s Wedding

Friday was Enda and Lillie’s wedding in Galway City, and it was a good one.

No, strike that. Let’s start again.

Friday was Lillie and Enda’s wedding in Galway City, and it was a really great one.

Weddings are mostly about the people who are there, and I think that’s one key reason why this wedding was such a lovely day. There were just a lot of lovely people there. My day was warm and sweet and funny, from the very moment we opened the front door of the hotel and stepped inside. This was not some magic trick on my part. It was the people, pure and simple, and how lovely they all were.

We immediately met the groom, Enda Jnr., who had the kind of suit you’d like to get for yourself if you were getting married. His Mum and Dad, Ann and Enda Snr., were right there too. Enda is Patricia’s brother, and I usually am granted the pleasure of sitting with him at weddings. Not today. Today he had a whole different seat to fill. Ann looked beautiful and her default sunny firebrand mode pertained right through the day and long after I had stumbled off to bed.

There’s something about a G&T in a big roundy glass that just lets you know that you’re out. You can try to replicate it at home but it’s just not the same. A buzz went around that the bride was near, so we all hustled ourselves into the private area where the wedding was due to take place. We scored a seat a few rows back and wondered if we were too close, but we toughed it out and were rewarded with a top view of proceedings. A very well-dressed lady came up to the very front row and wondered if she’d be okay to sit there. I started to explain to her that the front row was probably reserved for immediate family when a gentle nudge from Patricia advised me that this was the Mother of the Bride. Apparently, women can identify Mothers of the Bride without actually knowing who they are. Another key difference between the sexes had thus been identified.

I thought the ceremony was really lovely. Lily was stunning in her bridal dress, and we've already covered Enda back up the text. The couple’s two sons were both highly present in the proceedings, culminating in the creation of an artwork made from coloured sand which the whole little family delighted in making. For a moment, there seemed to be no ceremony, no huge event. Just Mum, Dad and the two kids at play, being guided, messing up a little bit and, ultimately, making something special.

To the bar, where we scored a table and a big platter of hors d'oeuvres all to ourselves. The lady who had sung the eclectic music from the wedding ceremony (You’ve Got a Friend in Me), now set up across from us and started singing live to some gentle accompaniment from her technology. She had a lovely voice. After a while, she started to take requests, each of which she delivered with style and grace. I offered her one of my hors d’oeuvres, but she politely declined.

I always find great delight in meeting my Brother-in-Law, John. We hit the bar and had a respective pint and a glass of Guinness and started a conversation that proceeded to weave its way though the entire day. Topics covered included Quantum Physics, works derived from the work of Jane Austen, Bob Dylan, the Housing Market, Bargain Glasses and our mandatory heated disagreement which this time concerned the year that Jackson Browne played Lisdoonvarna. John is the very best.

Dinner came around and I had Eamon on one side and John on the other, with Patricia right across the table. An ideal arrangement. Eamon has a few years on me, and he is getting ready to jump out of an aeroplane in a few weeks. I asserted my view that he is a feckin’ lunatic. I seem to have turned into my Dad in many ways, one of which is a need to try to build a rapport with the persons serving dinner. My Dad had mercenary intentions in doing this as he always wanted to score a second helping of baked Alaska. I have no such desire; I think it’s just in my genes. Dinner rolled along with no sign of speeches. A lovely little girl, the daughter of a couple at our table, rifled her activity pack and found tiny stickers of coloured rainbows and I was gifted a particularly fetching one on the back of my hand. I treasured it right up until my pre-bedtime ablutions.

Speeches are always a high point for me. The acid smell of nervous sweat that gently emanates from the participants is like ambrosia to my senses. The food of the Gods, that is, not the creamed rice.

Lily delivered a compact, admirable speech. She is very much someone I wish I knew better. We meet from time to time, of course, but it is always at some family moment or other where time and opportunity do not always align. She is an admirable person who I see as having warmth and determination in roughly equal measure. Hopefully, in the coming years, we can sit down and I can demonstrate first-hand what a big eejit I am.

The speeches did not disappoint. Conor, Enda’s brother, was best man and the best fun in his speech was when he ribbed his brother warmly about such diverse matters as the maturing ability of his left foot and Enda’s youthful inability to progress beyond a second can. The fun in this was mainly derived from Enda’s seemingly heartfelt annoyance at Conor’s pronouncements. The subliminal effect was of two brothers of great closeness who have had a lifetime together to learn exactly how far to push each other and exactly where to stop.

Enda’s Snr’s gentle voice did not trouble the quirky microphone. Enda cannot help but be himself, no matter what the situation, and ‘himself’ is such a good thing to be that it carries us all along with him. His speech was warm and funny, and we were with him though every word, as we will always invariably be.

The Father of the Bride delivered an old school speech with a beautifully timed gag about gardening right in the middle. Kudos from this writer for that. His love and respect for his daughter shone through and I felt I knew her a little better when he regained his seat.

Tables were cleared and a lively band took up residence beside the bar. Hard working and entirely convincing, they filled the floor with ease at moments when so many bands can struggle. I always enjoy watching the band at weddings and these boys worked hard, every one of them multitasking their way through the set. Including the drummer, who seemed to be on Social Media duties while maintaining a dirty backbeat.

I am of the elder generation now and I don’t generally last into the traditional wee small hours. At around one-ish, Patricia and I executed a reduced version of an Irish Goodbye and slipped away. 

From where I was sitting, standing, and stealing late night pizza, it was a most excellent wedding, full of love and fun. Thank you for having us, Lillie and Enda, we hope to see you again soon.

Many congratulations to Enda and Lillie. They really make the most splendid couple, and this meagre blog wishes them many long decades of love and health and adventure with their lovely children and with each other.

As they said somewhere back in the Book of Tobit; “Grant that they may find mercy and may grow old together.”

4^th May 2025