All Ireland Day

It's like a time warp in our house. The whole day, from the time we all woke up this morning, has been about the fact that it is All Ireland day.

My mother is with us for the weekend, thank God. I'd struggle to get through All Ireland day without her wise words and expressive eyebrows.

We were told, by the brazen faced His Nibs, that he would be taking control of the television for the day. There was the minor match, he told me, the build up starting at half past twelve, an hour before the actual game.

Then there would be that match, then the aftermath of that match.

At three thirty, he informed me, there would be another match, the main event. As if I didn't already know all this.

All my life, All Ireland Day has been an important day.  Not to me, but to everyone who was in charge of me. 

Obviously, I don’t count His Nibs as one of these people.  I’m talking about my childhood.

I come from a long line of GAA fans.  My parents, and my grandparents, would talk about nothing but the big game for at least a week before the All Ireland.

On the big day, our Sunday roast would be eaten and the washing up done by one o’clock, when the eternal coverage would start.

If we were enjoying a particularly sunny September, the light would come in through the curtains.  It was the seventies, I don’t think the curtains were even lined.  Blackout curtains were far off in our future.

So my Dad, who loved GAA almost as much as he loved us, would hang a couple of blankets over the living room window, so that the room was in complete, black darkness.  The kind of darkness that makes children bump into furniture and yelp, usually just when someone was about to take a free or a penalty.  There was no sympathy, just a shout to shut up, and not to stand in front of the television.  Eventually we learned that if the sitting room was in blackout conditions, the simplest thing was to crawl across the floor on our hands and knees.

Obviously the people who designed the house we lived in back then either didn’t like watching matches, or didn’t have children.  To get from the back garden you had to walk through the kitchen and the living room, into the hall and then down to the bathroom.

It was an assault course for the six small children trying to navigate their way around the house while the adults sat riveted, and screaming at the telly.

So, His Nibs doesn’t frighten me with his blathering on about “The Match”.

My mother and I went out for lunch today.  Then we came back and in a pincer like attack, we threatened him with what we would do to him if he messed about.  There was to be no pausing at the good bits.  His Nibs likes to stop the game at essential moments and ask us to guess what will happen next.

I have absolutely no interest in GAA, so I just sit there making silly suggestions, like for instance maybe a fox will run onto the pitch and run off with the ball , or that a streaker will run across the pitch, or something equally unlikely.  

My poor mother, a lifelong GAA fan, does her best to be quiet and polite, but always ends up texting my brothers for updates.  She has to assume that we’ll never get to the end of the game in my house.

And when he’s seen the good bit, he’ll rewind and look at it again.  Eventually even I get fed up waiting for the final result and go online to find out what happens.

And today, after all that, after the argument, and the endless footage, and the television being at double the usual volume, which is apparently non negotiable, there was a draw.

And we have to do the whole thing again, in three weeks time.  On his birthday.  So we won’t be going out for a lovely lunch and I won’t be getting drunk to celebrate on his behalf, him being a non­ drinker.

Sometimes it’s hard, supporting a spouse’s interests.