Country Living with Francis Farragher

It probably slips into the ‘bad habit’ category but with the passing of time a ‘weakness’ seems to have set in with me, in terms of having a couple of pints of plain after finishing a day’s work.

The odd moan might come from my lips about having a tough day ‘in the office’ but it’s a complaint that doesn’t get much traction from some of my colleagues who might be after enduring a long day of hard physical work on the buildings.

I’ve been that soldier too, during many summers the late 1970s, when like the squirrel, I tried to store away some nuts (the financial variety) to keep me sustained through the leaner months of winter as the challenges of third-level education were faced.

Over the past month or so, my colleagues in ‘the local’ have been more than a little aggrieved over their trials and tribulations in what should be a time of peak midsummer weather, but July 2023 has been very unkind to the outdoor workforce.

They’ve endured a pretty unrelenting rain bombardment during our seventh month so it’s little wonder that they have zero sympathy for me, if I mention having had a ‘long day at work’.

“Pushing a keyboard and sitting down all day looking into a screen – sure that’s not work,” is the most common putdown and they do have a point, although if weather conditions were reasonably benign, I’d still maintain that ‘it’s hard to beat’ the great outdoors for a healthier way of life.

In terms of journalism and newspapers only the mechanics have changed over the past four decades or so. Most of my generation started out with a battered old typewriter, often having to write out our reports ‘long-hand’ before keying them in on the qwerty keyboard. With the passing of time, the brain learned to think onto the keyboard and the handwriting scripts were left behind.