Latest news with #Herself
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Irish Times
Yes, I'm a grump, but I don't get all the fuss about barbecues
Next week we're off on holidays for a few days and in advance of that, Herself was smitten by what everyone agreed was a good idea. She spotted, and bought, a portable pizza oven from one of the supermarket middle aisles. It's a dinky little thing, though when she brought it home, we realised that, while the oven is portable, the large gas canister it requires is slightly less so. Nonetheless, I took myself off to the shop and got the last one in stock. The checkout queue provided the explanation for this: it consisted almost exclusively of men buying barbecues or gas canisters, or both. This was that weekend in mid-July , when the country experienced almost record-breaking temperatures: a climactic phenomenon that seems to prompt in Irish humans an irresistible urge to cook and eat outside. It wasn't always like this. People will often say the summers were much warmer when they were young. Yet when they were young, they'd go home to have meat and spuds and veg. Indoors. Eating outside was regarded as a bit suspect, even reckless. No one did it, because everyone knew you can't turn your back on the Irish weather. It'll round on you in an instant. READ MORE But that attitude has changed, for various reasons. The smoking ban introduced the idea of the indoor-outdoor pub. Covid did the same for restaurants and coffee shops: and perhaps lulled us into the wish-fulfilling idea that Ireland is far more Mediterranean than we had previously thought. Some people are evangelical about barbecues, and will use their barbie every chance they get, even if it's raining. They'll have opinions on different sorts of meats and desserts and sauces, on the merits and demerits of gas versus charcoal, which baffles me. I get that charcoal may add a certain flavour to the meat and produce a pleasing aroma. But why use a gas cooker in your garden when there's a gas cooker metres away in your kitchen? Isn't that exactly the same? (I'm sure there's a barbecue-nerd explanation for this.) Equally baffling is why, just because it's sunny, people choose to cook meat in such a risky way. The advice is that chicken should be pre-cooked in the oven anyway (rendering the barbecue pointless) while grilling burgers and steaks is a knife-edge proposition. It's far more difficult to do on a barbecue, and all too often can lead to burnt on one side and raw on the other. Plus – at the risk of sounding all heteronormative – barbecuing seems to be a primarily male task: men who don't routinely prepare the family meals. So, you have an inexperienced cook using a piece of equipment that requires a lot of experience. It's a one-way ticket to Diarrhoeaville. Even if the beer-swilling alpha manages to produce food that isn't a gastroenteritis time bomb, Irish barbecue convention seems to demand that you consume it with your hands, with the plate sitting on your lap. Apart from being greasy and awkward, this makes you a target for every small flying creature in the garden. Within seconds, you'll be enveloped by a cloud of midges, bent on eating you, and your burnt dinner. But you can't move. You have to sit there and munch on your insect-laced burger and declare it to be delicious to stroke the ego of a man who barely knows how to switch on a kettle. [ Playing with fire: King of barbecue Andy Noonan of the Big Grill Festival shares his best tips and recipes Opens in new window ] Yes, I'm a miserable grump. And a hypocrite. Because, like most back gardens in Ireland, ours is home to a barbecue. It's small and red and we did try to use it once. But the smoke from the charcoal kept blowing back into the kitchen. Now it's a place for spiders to erect their webs during summertime. We think of it as doing our bit for rewilding. And if it's sunny and we want that barbecue vibe, we eat at the kitchen table and open the patio doors.
Irish Times
06-07-2025
- Automotive
- Irish Times
I was unfazed by a near car crash, so why does a dental visit leave me quivering?
A couple of weeks ago, I nearly died. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. It could have happened though – death, or serious injury. Or a slight injury. Or even a bit of a fright. But I experienced none of that. This is what did happen: I was driving on the M50 , then turned into the exit for the M7 . Ahead of me, a white van attempted to change lane, but there was a car right beside it. The two vehicles slammed into each other and wobbled. The van pulled into the hard shoulder, while the car skidded to a halt in the middle of traffic, straddling two lanes. I was directly behind, so I scarcely had time to think. I swerved around the stationary car. A moment's distraction and I would have crashed into the back of it. The motorist behind, without a view of what had just happened, would probably have crashed into me. READ MORE Later on, I checked online and couldn't find any reports of a crash. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Yet, obviously, it could have been far more serious. And I'm not telling you this to demonstrate my nerves of steel or my superior driving skill – I wouldn't claim to have either – but because of my reaction. I swerved around the car and drove on. I went about my day. That evening, I told Herself about it, but it wasn't the first thing I told her. It was almost an afterthought. Nor, in the days that followed, did I experience any delayed shock or a new appreciation of life. It was just a slightly surreal thing that happened. I don't seem to have been troubled by it. But I was slightly baffled as to why I wasn't. Two days later, I had to go to the dentist. There may well be people who enjoy such appointments, but I've yet to meet one. It is physically uncomfortable; I particularly dislike the pointy L-shaped instrument they use to hack at the teeth, as if they've suddenly decided to abandon all the years of training and just yank the tooth out like a medieval barber. Obviously, this comes from my own anxiety about the whole scenario in which the patient – this patient anyway – feels particularly vulnerable with their mouth cranked open while various tubes and fearsome-looking implements are used to scratch around inside. Part of that comes from not knowing exactly what the dentist is doing. In fairness, it's probably better that they don't share too much detail; and the patient isn't in a position to ask. But that information void can be filled with speculation: they are yanking at that tooth an awfully long time. Is there something wrong? Have they made a mistake? I tried to pass the time by counting how many objects were being placed inside my mouth, but abandoned that when it seemed like more was going in than coming out. [ Seán Moncrieff: The word 'old' has become an insult. If you're old, it's all over Opens in new window ] I tried staring serenely at the ceiling and listing all the things I would do when I got out of this chair, when I could move my shoulders again and give my now-aching jaw a rub. But that served only to draw my attention to my jaw and shoulders. And it wasn't just the discomfort or the vulnerability that I was trying to distract myself from: it was the jarring intimacy of the situation. For 90 minutes, two people leaned over my head and rummaged around inside. Yet they never made eye contact. Whenever the dentist spoke to me, she was looking away. All of this led me to ponder again why I was left unfazed by a near car crash, yet a dental visit leaves me quivering. We can be a mystery to ourselves. Perhaps it's time. The car incident lasted less than a second, and was over. Dental work never ends. I have to go back for a root canal.
Irish Times
18-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
I hate being sick but I've a fear of visiting any doctor. I'm not alone in this
I hate being sick. Obviously, no one is a fan of illness, but some people seem to be better at adapting to it, to tucking themselves into bed with a hot water bottle, Netflix and plenty of fluids. To me, that doesn't feel like the path back to good health , but lying in bed doing nothing. I start self-accusing: are you malingering? Are you really that sick? Too sick to get up and go to the bottle bank like you said you would? Invariably, I get up and go to the bottle bank and end up feeling worse. This is, no doubt, due to multiple flaws in my personality. It's also because I (luckily) don't get sick very often. It's an extreme rarity for me to have to take days off work: so, when it does happen, I assume that this is the beginning of the end. I check my will, leave instructions for the funeral and ponder the technicalities of having my ashes blasted into space. A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly developed a night-time cough that was so severe I couldn't sleep Herself can talk me out of my health catastrophising because she's a doctor. Not in the strict, medical qualification sense, but because she's one of those people who somehow knows a lot about diseases and the treatments they require. My sister has the same eerie ability. READ MORE A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly developed a night-time cough that was so severe I couldn't sleep. I spent hours hacking up while googling Death by Coughing and funeral venues. Herself told me I probably had a postnasal drip, which sounded gross but not too bad. Yet for some days, I didn't do anything to confirm this. I suffer from a degree of irrationality when it comes to visiting a GP or any sort of doctor. I should regard it as a process where I'm getting something fixed – like bringing a car to a mechanic – but I don't. Not far below the surface lurks a fear that the doctor will ignore the symptoms I'm presenting with and instead unearth something far more serious: dispatching me to meet with a series of dark-faced consultants who will tut ominously and berate me for not having come to see them sooner. I'm not alone in this. Years back, my father had to have emergency surgery, but refused an ambulance. He insisted on driving himself to the hospital – which was an hour away – because he didn't want to make a fuss. And I remember being annoyed with him because, obviously, driving when you have a life-threatening condition is deeply irresponsible. But another part of me completely understood. I would have been tempted to do the same. This is, it seems, a Man Thing. Men are far less likely to go to the doctor than women. One American survey found that most men would rather clean a toilet than visit a GP. Which tells you who normally does the toilet cleaning. [ My daughter drags us on to rollercoasters but is wary of the monkey bars. People are a mystery Opens in new window ] In one sense, this is counterintuitive, given that women have to routinely endure far more humiliating and invasive procedures than men do. You'd think they would be the reluctant ones. But men seem held back by a range of factors, which presumably vary depending on the male in question: they don't wish to be viewed as weak or lacking stoicism. They find it embarrassing. They fear judgment. They fear there will be bad news. Being men, they don't want to admit to fear and instead opt to avoid medical encounters altogether. It'll probably get better by itself. But sometimes it doesn't. The coughing and lack of sleep eventually got to the point where I had to be a big, brave boy, take a day off work and go to the doctor. The GP looked in my throat and listened to my chest. She looked at her computer screen and sighed: as if weary at the self-destructive folly of people like me. Solemnly, she told me that I had a postnasal drip.
