Country Living with Francis Farragher

It mightn’t feel like holiday season as the rains return almost every second day with unrelenting persistence, but for those of use lucky enough to be able to plan for a few days off, we’re right in the thick of that season when schools are closed and the more slightly affluent mortals plan to spend a few days away from the nest.

As a child of the 1960s, the whole holiday concept wasn’t even a fleeting thought entering the mind’s eye. Holidays from school were always associated with jobs like saving hay, footing turf, cutting thistles with a rusty scythe, and maybe . . . just maybe . . . a visit to a neighbour’s house to see the Galway Plate or The Hurdle on TV.

Of course, as the saying goes, ‘what we didn’t know didn’t trouble us’, and as children we never felt that we were one bit hard done by as we had to settle for a ride on the bumping cars, on occasions such as Lady Day in Athenry. There was never any expectation of a holiday materialising and for most families of that time, the spare money just wasn’t there for such luxuries.

Occasionally though, our curiosity would be stoked by a 15-minute morning holiday programme on the then Radio Éireann, which had the Cliff Richard hit ‘Summer Holiday’ as its signature tune, but the simple lyrics of that melody never put any ‘wild notions’ into our heads. “We’re all goin’ on a summer holiday, No more workin’ for a week or two, Fun and laughter on our summer holiday, No more worries for me or you, For a week or two. We’re goin’ where the sun shines brightly, We’re goin’ where the sea is blue, We’ve seen it in the movies, Let’s see if it’s true.”

Pictured: Blame it all on the Romans: the first of the holiday-makers.