I'm getting too old for this lark

Yesterday, spurred on by the spring sunshine, we put the kids on the bikes and headed to the huge green lung that's on our doorstep, the Phoenix Park. We had tooled around the park for most of the afternoon when we came across some neighbours and their kids. Their son, a seven year old, challenged me to a game of football and wanting to engage in some anaerobic exercise I obliged. It was the usual cat and mouse game of me not trying too hard to score and him scoring at will. To make it a little harder for myself I then had to insist on only shooting with my weaker left foot (mind you the right foot is pretty weak too). It was an accident waiting to happen. I shifted my weight to my right foot, prepared to shoot, stood in a divot and twisted my ankle. Bollix. Being an heroic kind of chap I soldiered on for the rest of the day until I eventually fainted in my sister-in-laws house last night. In the course of doing so I managed to smash my head against a wall and now I'm hurting in both mind and body. My wife being the trooper that she is has nursed me back to some form of health this morning and has also taken the kids out for the day. I've exhausted the sports supplements in the papers and I turn to this blog to occupy me for a time.

I was checking out one of the comments on the Bob Byrne post below. It led me to the blog of The Slaughterhouse Rat. One of the posts there really resonated with me. It's this one and it treats the quintessentially Irish pastime of getting off your face on a reasonably cheap substance. Such pursuits made up a large part of my youth and undoubtedly was similar to the experiences of plenty of Dublin suburbanites growing up in the eighties and early nineties. It probably started with my first Major cigarette all those years ago and has encompassed a wonderful array of intoxicants such as Tippex Thinner, Devil's Bit cider, Getafixes, and a sundry amount of overpriced underwhelming Class A's. Bejaysus, you'd swear I was Hunter S Thompson the way I'm going on but such pursuits were and have been standard practice for the youth of Ireland for many years. Throw a load of substandard soapbar into the mix and it's a wonder that anyone between the present age of 25 and 35 is still alive. God bless the staying power of Irish youth.