A time when common sense and rules make for uneasy bedfellows

Country Living with Francis Farragher

The other evening as I made the decision to chance having a couple of pints in the great outdoors, the thought struck me that there comes a time when that most invaluable asset for a decent existence — namely common-sense — gets thrown to the wolves. When sets of rules, laws and restrictions are brought in for the so-called greater good, there are casualties along the way, and many of them are ones that can be avoided.

That evening, there were two men in the corner of ‘the garden’ who should have been enjoying their usual chat over a pint of plain, in relative comfort and warmth. Surely one of life’s little pleasures, as the passing years slip by into decades and if we’re all lucky enough to live into what Big Tom called in his song, ‘The Sunset Years of Life’.

Between them, those two customers have enjoyed at least 150 summers but instead of being able to enjoy their couple of pints and chat inside a very warm, cheerful and most importantly of all spacious bar or lounge, they had to endure a biting wind from the north-west. They were ‘white with the cold’.

Now, there may be greater problems out there in the big bad world and the worrying Winter that we’re now facing into, but I would just love if Mr. Micheál, Mr. Leo and Mr. Eamon could explain very simply to me why it would not be eminently more sensible to let those two old-timers enjoy their chat and couple of pints indoors without risking getting a bad cold or a severe dose of pneumonia.

Alas, I fear, we’re now seemingly all doomed to suffocate in a Winter of doom and gloom. Last Sunday morning, as I viewed the newspapers from the stands, one publication was trying to outdo the other in terms of telling us how bad things were going to be over the coming weeks or months. Only, after some deliberation, did I grudgingly decide to buy one of them. There is after all, only so much bad news that any sane mind can absorb.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app

The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.