A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Paul Mescal has a lot to answer for – and it’s nothing to do with his Oscar nights or his antics in Normal People.

No, it’s his propensity to wear sports shorts completely out of context and season – football togs, in old money – because he has inspired a nation of copycats.

Everywhere you look there are fellas out on freezing nights in O’Neill’s togs – frequently set off with white ankle socks and sometimes even sliders – as though they were wandering back from the beach for an hour on a sun bed beside the pool, instead of coping with the freezing temperatures sent down here from the Arctic.

Last Thursday night was the coldest night of the year and only an eejit would go out without a big coat, gloves and a hat.

Indeed you could argue that only an eejit would go out at all, but at least we were on our way to a play – so that was a good excuse given that we’d spend the night in out of the cold.

There we were, wrapped up like Eskimos and edging gingerly through the sleet along the Salmon Weir Bridge when who should be happen upon?

A fella in a sweatshirt and football togs as though this was a sun-kissed evening stolen from July.

Perhaps these hardy boys look on with the same sense of astonishment at us wearing four layers, hat and gloves – but you don’t have to have spent time in medical school to know that you don’t die from sweating.

And yet funnily they don’t even look all that cold. They’re not rushing anywhere fast to get warm; they’re just strolling around like superstar footballers who just bought the place.

Their only concession to this being March in Ireland and not Marbella in August is the said sweatshirt they’re wearing over their tee-shirt to stave off complete hypothermia.

Ironically – and this is only from personal experience – as soon as they go home to the old pair’s gaff for the weekend, the first thing they do is hit the central heating so they can shed the oul’ sweatshirt and chill, but not be chilly because the boiler is burning away for all it’s worth.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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