Sunday morning, blue sky and blue bag bliss

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Sometimes it all just becomes a little too much. My energy levels crash, my scribbling buds dry up and finally, I’m unable to organise or prioritise.

Sometimes I just can’t face another ‘ise’ but thankfully I know exactly what to do.

There is no finer medicine for your colyoomist than to pack Blue Bag and drive off in my car, Bennet, early on a sunny summer’s morning.

The sky is pure blue but I suspect that as the day heats up it will fill with towering storm clouds. It’s only 7am but the temperature’s already up to 19c, so it’s going to be a scorcher. Dew steams low-slung clouds that hang above the long grasses at the roadside.

The hay has been cut, leaving green fields of pasture lying beside acres of golden stubble: the visual signature of a warm summer.

To hasten my feelings of escape, I play a little game, trying to decide when I’m really free of the city, all the time knowing that it has to be beyond the last roundabout past Oranmore. Just as it was in my hitching days, once on the road to Clarinbridge I know I’m on a Blue Bag adventure.

Of course now there’s also ‘Dead Tiger Roundabout’ to negotiate. Built for an estate that was never started. I hope that as you drive around it, you revel both in the wondrous absurdity of a roundabout that goes nowhere, while paying heed to how it perfectly reflects the way society goes when driven by greed.

Sunday mornings are absolutely the best time to hit the road. The curtains of Ireland are drawn, hiding sore heads and mouths open and dry.

It’s just me and the livestock, both awake for hours, staring at each other across the sweep of tarmac and grass.

Shooting down an empty M18, I’m south of Limerick before the shops have sorted their morning papers and by Abbeyfeale I realise I must slow down. In fact, I have to stop, because I’ll arrive way too early.

Amazingly there’s a wee cafe open but I really shouldn’t have the Full Irish, as I had my regular Saturday brekkie yesterday and

“Hello? What can I get you?”

“I’ll errr I’ll have the oh pfffp, I’ll have a Full Irish thanks!”

So weak and yet so right. Perfect, in fact, snarfed down with gallons of strong sweet tea and pages of World Cup drivel from a Sunday red top.

Stuffed and blissed out, I head past Tralee. Half way to Dingle the narrow twisty road is blocked by a couple of cyclists riding two abreast.

Many of my friends are cyclists so I listen to long horror stories of how badly they are treated by drivers, but what am I to do? It’s a hell of a long way past Dingle to my friend Angel’s new gaff, so am I supposed to just sit behind them for the next two hours?

Am I supposed to try and overtake them, thereby endangering my own life, theirs and those of any unseen approaching traffic?

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.