Hilary Fannin: My patriotic Top 17 highlights of all things Irish

In recognition of the day that’s in it and the extended public holiday we’ve been granted to better enjoy the festivities, I thought I would eschew my usual form and write an uplifting and positive St Patrick’s Week column. Yes, in celebration of our Glorious Patron Saint of the Ophidiophobes, I’d like to share my personal highlights of all things Irish.

This year, I’m going to drag myself away from dismal recollections of an Irish childhood watching parades of tractors and khaki-clad soldiers trundling down O’Connell Street in the drizzle while the Artane Boys Band beat out their proud rhythms, their skinny little fingers grazing those great big tubas.

Furthermore, I’m going to mute my melancholy, silence my sepia-toned scepticism and try to forget about motherless babies winging their way to Kansas and Kentucky and quiet ghosts in wet laundries scrubbing away our national shame while we applauded a small herd of shiny Massey Fergusons on the move.

I’m even going to turn my mind’s eye away from the 15-denier-clad thighs of American majorettes, their teeth illuminating the gloom as they high-stepped past the pockmarked General Post Office, where our heroes were celebrated and proclamations proclaimed. God almighty, when I was a child I would have sold my original-sin-stained soul to have been a majorette, to have stepped into my very own pair of glossy white patent-leather boots and stomped all over the sodden streets of the capital.

Hilary Fannin: He was a handsome, gentle boy, a dreamer with a practical streak

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Hilary Fannin: My days of cognitive disintegration in taxis at 2am are over

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Hilary Fannin: I now accept I’ll never be a ‘high-net-worth individual’

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Hilary Fannin: Ignoring the elephant in the room – and its enormous erection

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Anyway, anyway, anyway, on this felicitous weekend it’s time to leave the past alone and to tiptoe through today’s triumphant tulips. Here, then, is my patriotic Top 17 treasury of Irish life and living – in no particular order and irritatingly Dublin-centric, and all done within the confines of my word count:

1. Almond buns and coffee in Bewley's Grafton Street under Harry Clarke's stained-glass windows. (It's waiter service now, you have to queue, and even the ghosts have been reupholstered, but still. . .)

2. Swimming in Lough Hyne, about 5km outside Skibbereen, a salt-water lake connected to the sea by rapids where the water feels like velvet.

3. A gin and tonic in Neary's, on Dublin's Chatham Street, one of the city's most alluring literary bars and a sweet spot to shelter from the damp.

4. Kells Bay, in Co Kerry, halfway between Glenbeigh and Cahersiveen, home to a Blue Flag beach with views of Dingle Bay and the Blasket Islands. This childhood haunt is soon to house a tincture of my mother's ashes.

5. The walk from Dublin city centre to the Liberties, past St Patrick's Cathedral and up Cork Street. Best undertaken when your destination is your mate's sweet cottage that he finally, finally managed to get a mortgage for, having rented it for aeons, thereby rescuing it from the beaks of a vulture fund.

6. And while we're in the area, anyone yet to visit Marsh's Library, adjacent to St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, go. When it opened in 1707 this magnificently well-preserved building of the early Enlightenment was the first public library in Ireland. It's a moving and beautiful place, haunted by some of the most gracious and well-read ghosts in the city.

7. In the same vein, I have to mention the Long Room in Trinity College Dublin's Old Library. Built between 1712 and 1732, and nearly 65 metres in length, it is filled with 200,000 of the library's oldest books. That such calm and impressive places can exist in this dyspeptic world is some comfort.

8. Kehoes Pub on Dublin's South Anne Street in the afternoon.

9. The Burrow Beach in north Co Dublin, with views across to Ireland's Eye and Lambay Island. This is a brilliant place to listen to owners calling their dogs: "Abigail, come here", "Sebastian, catch the ball", "Amaryllis, put down that seagull!" Love it.

10. The gardens and woodland planted by my recently departed pal a couple of country miles outside Clonakilty, Co Cork. His passion, strength and commitment to the earth continue to yield beauty.

11. Every indie bookshop in the country.

12. The big squashy seats in Dublin's arthouse cinemas.

13. Irish theatre – a resilient beast.

14. Fish and chips on the west pier.

15. The knots of young people of all genders, predilections, orientations and none, arm in arm, across our towns and cities. The respect and affection they show each other reflects the best of us.

16. More fish and chips, this time in Ramelton, Co Donegal, from the food van parked on the banks of the river Lennon.

17. An extra holiday on the 18th!