In a Word . . .

Any day now it should start, the nostalgia. Yes, folks, that thing of the past will raise its rose-tinted head to be stroked lovingly with a way-we-were nice warm feeling beloved of those who like to reinvent what was, sweetly.

So American songwriter Neil Sedaka can get away with such sickly ditty as The Hungry Years, and: "I miss the hungry years/The once upon a time/The lovely long ago/We didn't have a dime/Those days of me and you/We lost along the way."

Bless my dear, tender West of Ireland soul but excuse me while I go to the bathroom.

Clearly Neil Sedaka never knew a day’s hunger in his life, never mind `years’. Nor did the people who made it a huge, sloppy, sentimental success in 1975. (I must try song writing. Schlock sells).

Translated fiction round-up: The inescapable entanglements of recent history

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The good old days are back: opium, fancy hats, colonialism and well-lit sex

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Ray D’Arcy, almost overcome by calamity, presents his most memorable show in ages

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Looking at the past pinkly seems to be an affliction of the `things are just never as good as they were’ brigade. They who always hanker back.

Such as those UK neighbours who long for the `spirit of the blitz’, forgetting the bombings and horrendous deaths that made it necessary. Or the localfriends at home who cherish a simpler Ireland of comely maidens and athletic youths, forgetting there were few of either in a country beset by poverty and emigration.

So let us remind any who dare to speak sparkling of life in Ireland last Spring/early summer, in those `not really lockdown’ months, let us remind them of the why, of that killer disease which took cost almost 2,000 lives, to date, and inflicted suffering on tens of thousands.

Yes, the weather was good, though you could hardly fry an egg on the stones around here. There was Normal People, the roads were clear, and the birds did sing, but all those (apart from the roads) would have happened anyhow.

Nor is there any harm in remembering things positively, even the enforced incarceration with occasionally loved ones, but nor should we forget that this was all against the background of an incurable plague.

So let us remember, accurately. Who misses the queues, the confinement, or those thirsty weeks as the pubs remained closed?

Regardless, however we remember it, we certainly won’t forget 2020, the year of Covid-19 (even if the 19 refers to last year!)

Memory from Old French memoire, for `remembrance, record', from Latin memoria.