14/09/2026
Salthill on a sunny day, excited screams of delight from paddling children in the wave-flecked water, the silvery beach sand shimmers against a backdrop of faraway blue Burren hills, and to the right, by the rock-groin, a jumble of abandoned buckets and spades as someone discovers a crab, or a jellyfish in a rock pool, screaming seagulls soar high overhead, a blush of sunburn pinks on your arms, your mother sits on a tassel-fringed Foxford rug, head back, uncharacteristically relaxed, eyes closed, beautiful face to the sun, lost, in a chore-free, care-free, reverie all her own, while behind her, Michael O’Hare’s commentary voice wafts from the open doors of cars parked along the prom, where men, your father included, all recently escaped from mass, sit in rolled-up shirt-sleeves and knotted-handkerchief sunshades, listening intently, head-cocked, to the ebb and flow of a tightly contested match in Croke Park, their reverence interrupted by the angelus jangle of an ice cream van’s jingle that calls the faithful for 99’s, and golly bars, and you, almost in disbelief, dissolve in that first, much-anticipated, vanilla-cream, slurping lick, that sends sugary chill-shock shooting to your sand-frosted temple, a memory-mark, and you know, you just know, though that realisation won’t reveal itself for another twenty or thirty years, that you will remember this moment, forever!
Photo and words; Brian Nolan
