Getting rid of things doesn’t come naturally. I hail from a line of well-intentioned hoarders and try as I may to toss the surpluses aside, I usually fail. Which is not funny in a family as large as ours.

The clothing bank for example. I sort the clothes into bags at home and feel the lightness of making some headway. It’s at the bank that I crumble. I pull things from the bags and wonder what the hell I was thinking at home – this cute little Gap denim shirt may not fit any of them any more, but would be gorgeous on one of their teddy bears.

One evening I stood there with my sister – who hasn’t inherited the hoarding trait – and she spoke gently, cajoling me into tossing the things I would’ve returned home with.
‘Throw it in’.
‘But what if we have another baby – I mean I know we’re not going to but what if. Then I’ll be thinking about the red cardigan here, and how the baby should be wearing it like all his brothers did and…’
‘Look, throw it in and in the unlikely event that you have another baby and it happens to be a boy, I’ll buy you another one’.
‘But it won’t be the same, theirs…’ I said placing it reluctantly in the dark ominous chute. Thinking I’ll just pop back with a coat hanger when she’s gone. Fish it out.
This went on, item by item of clothing. Each piece had acquired sudden merits and uses that I just couldn’t spot at home. Other people came and went, tossing merrily without a thought. Wondering what the hell we were up to I’m sure. But the weight was lifting in the dimming light and I was almost finished when she noticed.
‘The barrier in the car park is down. I think we’re locked in’.
Yep. So engrossed were we in fixing my hoarding gene that we didn’t notice all the other cars leaving and the car park closing. An outside car park that we could walk away from, thankfully, but the car was stuck. We were going away the following morning and the car was, well, a necessity. I phoned him, explaining tentatively that I was doing such a good job with the old de-cluttering thing when some arse-hole came along and locked the car in the car park.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t see or hear it closing. I was thinking about the boys when they were tiny, you know, smelling their clothes, clinging onto them, in another world’.

Thankfully he is a man with solutions and between the jigs and the reels he arrived at the car park and drove the car horizontally across a vertical grass bank and out between it and a bollard. Very Top Gear. Unfortunately arousing the suspicions of neighbours who came out for a gawk, fingers on dials ready to call the police for the joy-riding hooligans. All because of a bit of de-cluttering. Enough to put me off it for life.

There was an ironing board I cheerfully tried to get rid of while on holidays. The legs on it have snapped. Irreparable.
‘Put it out, it’s dangerous’, I said, delighted with myself, feeling a new muscle being exercised. Then the next morning I looked out the window as the holiday bin clearer arrived. He sorted through stuff, and then I saw it. The lovely bright ironing board. Sunflowers on a blue and white check pattern, winking at me from across the court-yard. It looked perfect. Lovely. Lonely. So I nipped out when he went off with some of the other stuff and I stole it back. Hoping that any CCTV cameras that might be lurking wouldn’t pick me up. What had I been thinking of, throwing it out? Sure it doesn’t need legs. We can just lie it flat on the floor and iron like that. For all of the two occasions that we might need to iron while on holidays. A surge of relief swept through me as I put it back in the cupboard. Saved from the dangerous world of getting rid of something. That we might really need. Someday.

But there’s that feeling that accompanies the drawing close of September. A rare organizational feeling. It comes but once a year. Not in spring-time when it occurs to most normal people. No, spring cleaning passes me by completely. Mine coincides with the kids going back to school. Some sort of latent guilt about sending them off to toil. If they are to suffer then so must I. The feeling only lasts for a few days. Until they are settled back in. Then I forget all about it. This is our only chance. I enlist the help of a kind, yet ruthless, East European lady – recommended by my sister – for an hour. She quizzes me, waving a piece of art one of the kids has done, and before I have a chance to say yay or nay she has binned it.
‘It is broken’ she says, referring to the snowman’s carrot nose which was peeling off.
‘Yes, yes, broken’ I say, thinking how I know I’ll rummage, after she’s gone, in the recycling bin and retrieve it.
‘I know’ she says ‘they want to keep everything, but it is no good’.
‘No good at all’ I say staring at her, wondering if I might ever be like her. A ruthlessly efficient detached thrower outer. Nah. But I can copy her. Act as if, for today.
She fills a black sac from the one room, even though I’ve tided laboriously for her coming. How does she do that?

She moves onto the laundry area. We are the lucky recipients of many a bag of great second hand clothes for the boys from various kind sources. We are overflowing, swimming in these seas of kindness. The drawers are stuffed. We’ve nowhere to put it all. If only I was more successful at the clothing bank chute… She points and she quizzes me and I shrug and eventually she bags everything out of sight. Which is a relief, although I’m not sure what the next step is supposed to be.
‘I will come again in two weeks. All the clothes will be gone. Then if it is ok I will do the cupboards. Throw out everything expired’.
‘Yes, yes, fine’ I say, wondering if I am correct in my understanding that she has left me homework to do. All the clothes will be gone. How, to where? I daren’t say out loud.
‘I really want to help you’ she says which is simultaneously relieving and irritating. Surely she could keep such saviour thoughts to herself.
‘I have only one child. I do not know what it must be like with five’.
Chaos, clearly, my dear new friend. Chaos in a good way. I swear.

Six weeks of Connemara bliss is not enough it seems. There are pleas to stay on for just a few more days. Heels being dragged while packing should be going on. Last minute bargaining and bids. They furnish us with some excellent points.

1. Real friendships have been made with lovely kids that you just don’t find in the city.

2. Everyone in town is welcoming and makes you feel like you belong.

3. Everything is simpler.

4. One friend asked for and received a pet pig for his birthday. This wouldn’t happen in the city. He’d be asking for a Nintendo instead.

The last point is part of a bid for us to move there altogether. They know we love the wholesomeness of the life of some of their friends. And that we hate Nintendos.

5. The ladies in the old fashioned sweet shop. They made up little gift bags for each child. Tied and decorated them with hand made individual name tags. Because they say they will miss us. One had tears in her eyes. Would this happen In Dublin? Nah…

6. The party.

Ah yes, the party. We are invited to a party. It is for a young teenage child. I arrive with my lot for the 3.30 start. I’ve calculated that we’ll be home in time to nab a DVD from the store that closes at 7. The dinner will be a simple oven bake affair. The naïveté of me. I’ve misunderstood, completely. Time doesn’t enter into it. It does not have an end. This is a relaxed fun party which is as much for adults as it is for kids. There’s an obstacle course bouncy castle with a back drop of the Twelve Pins.

The adults – holiday makers, neighbours, relatives, friends – turn a wise blind eye to the bouncing shenanigans. Food, wine, merry banter and a feeling of celebrated inclusion for all. I don’t know anyone except the hosts but it makes no odds. A common thread is a love for the place where the party is being held.

The arrival of high tide is announced and the kids decide that jumping from the rocks is in order. They’ve scarpered before any dissenting adult can be heard. The tide is the highest we’ve ever seen it. Something to do with the super moon perhaps. Friendships are consolidated as they take leaps together.

Float and chat in their deep ocean bliss. Then trot back across the headland for fairy liquid soapy speedy bouncy castle sliding. Marque 5, the youngest by far, shoots past me like a bullet, flies through the air and lands on his back. So I ban him from that muttering about how I’m not taking anyone to Galway hospital. Not tonight. He finds a safer flat area to slide through tunnels and the others join him and I retreat to the merry banter inside. At nine-ish the music begins. Kids playing button accordions, concertinas, piano, the fiddle. Together. Alone. There’s a wealth of talent. A boy breaks into song. Relaxed, sitting, tapping his foot along to his astounding resonance and lilt. Mine look on smiling, admiring. They’ve never seen the like. They seem almost shy in it. They don’t want to leave. Not at all. But there’s a tricky drive down the room-for-one-car-only long windy road, in the pitch black. Before hitting the 15km road back to the town. At 11.00 we are the first to bid farewell. It is, mine say, the best party they’ve ever been to. I know what they mean. Then they are tasked with shouting ‘dip’ at me when they spot an oncoming car’s headlights. All the way home. To that oven bake dinner at midnight, over which they recount their favourite moments still smiling.

7. Everything feels less rushed, more free.

8. The views and the beaches. Always something beautiful to look at. Some place beautiful to be. To collect the shell of the day.

Ah yes, the shell of the day. A competitive tradition we set in motion many moons ago. Any time we are on our favourite beach he says ‘who’s going to find me the shell of the day?’ and they take off, fanning out, scouring. Sometimes we join them, looking for it ourselves. Sometimes we slink back in our chairs and relax. We know when it is procured. Gasps. Screeches. And then the run back to show us.

9. The animals, especially the wild ponies and donkeys.

10. Finally a damning point from marque 4. ‘Don’t blog about it. Everyone will want to go there.’

It’s hard to counter argue with them. We have, after all, set ourselves up for this. Handed them the stick to beat us with. Imbued them with the notions of simplicity, beauty and connectivity that they are spitting back at us. Maximised the time spent away from the metropolis so that they feel unable to return. As do we, in fairness. Weak lines are trotted out in our defence, falling on suitably deaf ears. I’m on the verge of calling on the television as a point to advance our cause. There’s no tele on holidays. Just a screen for the odd DVD or Netflix to be played. Surely they’ve missed the grating tones of their favourite American tv shows. I stop short. I know when I’ve been had.

‘Look at the traffic’ marque 1 pipes up as we approach home. ‘It’s got much worse since we were away.’

Indeed it has.

.

The most delicious part if the day is waking to the chimes of the town church spire clock. I refuse to check the time on my switched off phone. I listen and I count and I guess. One chime per hour of the day. This morning I listen and it stops on the ninth chime. I smile to myself. I could’ve sworn it was later. There’s a whole other hour of slumber ahead. The kids don’t begin to stir until at least ten. Delicious.

These late mornings are courtesy of the late nights. The good weather dictating the pace. Back from the beach at 9.30. Supper. Net flix. All the children knocking around as I read in a corner. Not checking the time. A delicious sleep on in the morning to look forward to. The church clock chimes twelve times. Then they are hooshed off to bed.

They do not know the day nor the hour. We are only aware of the time when we are on the tidal Omey island. To be unaware of the time and the tides is pure folly. We drive across the beach between Claddaghduff and Omey island at lowi-ish tide. Sometimes we give the boys a turn steering the car on the beach which is a great hit.

Then we drive to the furthest point on the island to swim, barbecue and explore. There’s nowhere else like it. The wildness of it. America. You can just taste it. Peculiar islands dot the horizon. Crow island – with tall craggy columns on it’s right hand extremity looking like some pre-historic creature.

Ancient bits of cars from a time when people dumped them as far out of sight as possible. Beautiful marbled stone with flecks of burnt orange and black. A surreal moon-scape feel to the place when frolicking about on the rocks.

We nearly miss the the incoming tide. We get back to the beach at Claddaghduff as the tide chases itself in. We’d no idea it comes in so fast. Two of the kids jump out to get caught up in it, screaming with laughter as it wraps around them. It races in from two sides across the vast strand – meeting in the middle and rendering Omey a true island again, inaccessible except by boat. There’s an eeriness to this scene. Both sides clawing jaggedly across the flatness until reunited in a monstrous act of subsumption. Swallowing up and stilling all the life and the sounds. One minute children, parents and grandparents dot the strand and cars with learner drivers and fun seekers zoom freely turning circles. The next all is quiet, stilled, disappeared. A clean slate is cast. A fresh start for those in need of one.

Once a year this strand plays host to ‘the other Galway races’ drawing crowds of thousands. We went along one year – a magical experience – the proximity of the horses to the spectators was exhilarating, the thud of the racing hooves on the strand splashing through remnants of water, a reminder of the temporariness of this spectacle. This year we witness the making of the race tracks the day before the races. Hundreds of fat wooden spiked poles are laid out and then hammered into the strand in sweeping circles. The tide will come in and subsume the race track over night. An image I can’t get out of my head. I find myself foolishly fretting about the poles and whether they can withstand the force of the full tide. I wish I could be there as it recedes to reveal the track. A surreal magical sight I’m sure.

As we make good our escape from the strand that day, the sea keeps pace with the car. It comes at us from the sides and behind. The kids are on look-out, high with the excitement of it as we ham up the notion that we will be caught. The best game of tag they’ve played.

For us the tragedy of the 21 Chinese cockle pickers caught by the incoming tide in Morecambe Bay, England, ten years ago springs to mind. The leader of the group had made a mistake about the time of the tides. Witnessing the speed of the tide at play here it is easy to understand how people get caught out and cut off. We leave the island with a greater respect for this fundamental natural force.

For the holiday time that remains to us we’ll continue to be guided by the chimes of the church spire clock. Come the rude schedules of September we’ll reminisce with disbelief that it can be that simple.

To go solo with the five in the West or to hot-tail it back to Dublin. This is the question. I’m a maximiser. I don’t want their holiday to end. If I can do it, then I should, I reason.
‘Don’t push until something breaks’ he warns. ‘By trying too hard you can do yourself and them a disservice’ or some such wise counsel to which I pay no heed. Until I’m standing at the front door secretly hoping his car won’t start and he’ll have to stay on with us. And then I see his taillights disappearing in the mist around the bend and I’m calling in my head for him hang on a second, I’ll just nab my bag and come too. The old telepathy doesn’t seem to work so well any more.

Safety is the main niggle. Keeping five safe on holidays without back-up. Keeping them safe at home is challenging enough. But there are people around for the unfortunate incidents. Relatives to muck in for the trips to A&E. I watch marque five playing football with a little friend from India here. The friend runs for the ball and slips landing on his arm. His dad goes to him as I rummage in my bag for a plaster. The dad smiles at me and says ‘I think it is broken’. I laugh. Good one. Pretend it’s worse than it is. Reverse psychology. ‘I really do think it is broken’ he says, still with the smile. Calm. He’s being calm, not playing humorous psychological tricks. And the child is calm too. Not a tear in sight. I wish I could be like that. Calm in the face of their injuries. Perhaps there’s a course in it. Which I’d fail. I take the deep breaths and tell them they are fine and smile reassuringly but they don’t buy it. A few weeks ago I was taking them out to the park. They begged to bring scooters/bikes. Marque 5 had his new little birthday bike which up until now had only been peddled around the back garden. I made him change before we left – from shorts and t-shirt to long sleeves and jeans. Stave of the minor grazes. We parked, removed the scooters/bikes and I instructed them to walk down the hill while I locked the car. Before I had the chance to turn the key I watched, as if in slow motion, marque 5 catapult over the handle bars and land on his head. I ran down to him, seeing his face was badly grazed, and he was crying and I was telling him he was fine. Until marque 2 said ‘what about his head, under his hair there, look’ and I picked up his fringe to an enormous pulsating bleeding bruised egg lump. And that was it. Pseudo calm out the window. The terror of damage to the lovely head. I grabbed him, hugged him, ran with him back to the car. Perhaps I hollered at the others to hurry and gather the vehicles. Perhaps a few tears escaped.
‘Are you cross with me?’ the little dote piped up from his seat, as he knew he hadn’t done as I’d instructed.
‘I just wanted to catch up with the others’ he explained.
‘No, I’m cross with myself’ I told him.
‘I should’ve made you wait until I had locked the car. I should’ve had a helmet on you. Your POOR little HEAD’. Perhaps a little sob escaped.
‘Mum, I think you’re making him nervous’ the ever calm in an emergency marque 2 piped up. I used to be like him. Before all the kids and the terror of something going badly wrong.
‘It’s alright, you’ve just got a bump and we’ll take you to the hospital to get it fixed, isn’t that right mum?’
Yes, yes, if you say so marque 2, that’s exactly what we shall do. And the phone calls began and the back up was there and all was well in the end.

His little friend’s arm was indeed broken – in two places. Trying to kick a ball one second and off to Galway City University hospital – over an hour away – the next. We’ve done that trip ourselves a few times – one parent with sick/injured and one with the others. If the need arises while going solo, it’d be all the kids and me in A&E. A scary thought.

They settle into the week with just me fine. The constant rain for the first two days means that we don’t have to push ourselves at all. We can but slob about and meander around town. Their expectations dwindle without the hope of escape to the beach. They all seem perfectly relaxed. The fact that it is a glorious heat wave in Dublin perturbs them not a jot. Me – certainly. Pictures of sun baked home as we shelter from the rain irks me but I don’t let on. We all wait patiently for it to do the courteous thing and arrive here too. Which three days in it’s refusing to do. Oh well. Tomorrow then. Fingers crossed. So far, so good. A bit of adult company wouldn’t go amiss – but hey. They are safe and happy and that’s enough for me. Kind of…

Day four the heat wave visits and at evening high-tide kids and adult holidaymakers appear from all angles – tele tubby style – across the beautiful headland to the best jumping-diving point. There’s infectious banter and camaraderie. Teenagers teaching kids how to dive. Kids leaping and belly flopping, laughing and screaming. Mothers taking deep and then deeper breaths. Crossing fingers. Throwing little prayers to the wind about the safety of necks and backs and keeping the seals and the jellyfish at bay, in that order. Swearing blind to remember their own togs and catapult in tomorrow if the weather holds to share in this turquoise clear Irish Atlantic madness.

It’s a little dizzying keeping track of them all on the rocks and in the sea. I’m constantly counting. They are easy to spot – the only ones not in wet suits. We’ve decided against the whole wet suit thing, reasoning that we never had them and managed just fine. Also, once introduced to the we think they’d never, ever swim without them. As it stands they have great fun in their togs and shivering in towels and changing back into their clothes, before doing it all over again. It seems natural.

‘Where’s marque 3’ I ask marque 2 who always knows where everyone is. Marque 3 is out of sight. We swing around, scanning, and then see him clambering towards us.

‘I slipped off the rocks and hurt my back’ he says and I’m staring at his leg as he turns around to show me his back. The back is grazed but looks ok. When he turns around towards me again it’s obvious that his leg is not. He hasn’t noticed the cascading blood and I have a chance to gather myself before pointing it out.
‘Your leg could do with a bit of attention though’ I say, thinking Galway hospital attention, as he looks down and gets a shock. Luckily I am in the presence of a lovely calm woman – another mother we’ve got to know over the years – and she casts a comforting glance at it and I know from her that it’s not as bad as it looks. I syphon off some of her calmness for myself. She offers to mind marque 5 while I run across the headland to the car. I have a freshly stocked first aid kit, which is most unlike me, in the glove compartment. A cast off from the camping trip. Marque 4 overtakes me running and asks me to throw him the keys. He seizes the kit, locks the car and then runs back past me over the hill waving the kit above his head. When I reach the rocks, marque 2 & 3 are huddled together and marque 1 – with a St John’s ambulance course under his belt – has the first aid up and running. Six disinfectant wipes later I can see that while there are three deep puncture wounds, with a little disconcerting white tissue exposed, we will not be heading off to Galway. Phew. Dogs circle around us and try to make off with the bloodied wipes and marque 3 is laughing again.

There’s a little niggle in my head that won’t go away though. If he’d been wearing a wet suit, this would not have happened. In the name of safety it’s time, perhaps, to revisit that discussion.

All told, it’s good to have stayed and I do it all again the next week for the hell of it. We’re in the groove now, relaxed days knocking around town and evening-time dips. He rejoins us for the bank holiday weekend, upping the scope of the activities and fun, and by Monday evening the question will arise again – should we stay or should we go now.

We wait for the forecast to tell us when the highlight of the holiday will be. There’s a niggle that we may have missed the boat. That we should’ve whipped them out of school in June, as the sun shone gloriously, and done it then. We need a run of a couple of days, preferably without rain. We watch, we listen and we google for our window of opportunity. Black clouds hover on the pictures. Black clouds with rain coming out of them. White clouds with rain. White clouds. We opt for a white cloudy day to set up, with the promise of a scorcher the following day. A big round yellow sun with the 21 degrees written beneath. That’ll do.

It’s all in the preparation, or so we learnt too late last year on our maiden camping in the wilderness trip. This year we are not to be fooled. The preparation starts in Dublin. Tents. Sleeping bags. Sleeping mats. Gas cooker. Torches. Going to the loo in the middle of a field, on a very dark misty night, with animals roaming, without a torch is not much fun. As we found out last year. A torch all round it is. Logs for the camp fire. Chairs. Food. Soup. Marshmallows. Water. Pear cider. We are so ‘prepared’ that we have to bring two cars. Two chock-a-block cars. We even bring a washing line rope in case the jeep has to tow the ‘new’ car out of some ditch on the rocky, marshy, undulating beautifully rollicky headland to where we are heading.

I take the lead in the jeep with three and we are making good progress along the road when I spot the empty fuel light flashing at me, flashing, flashing and then stubbornly staying on. Marque 2 phones the car behind and we all turn back on ourselves, retrace our route back to the town for diesel. Stumped at the first. After all that preparation! We snail back through the town, roadworks causing delays, procure the precious fuel and set off again. A thick misty drizzle descends. But we know the forecast. This will clear, making room for the scorcher ahead of us tomorrow .

We bump along to the gate, open it, two cars through, then stop to decide whether we’ll brave going to the furthest beach across the headland, or somewhere closer so the ‘new’ non-tractor style car can make it. Decision made. He opts to go first, except when he turns the key in the ignition there’s a chug and then nothing. He tries again. Nothing. We are stuck at the gate. We think. The AA. Nope. Pushing it out of the way of the gate. Nope. Washing line, ah yes, what fore-sight, we’ll tow, but to where, and why, and I’m muttering to myself about how somebody is trying to tell us something. To abort the whole thing. It’s obvious isn’t it. Thankfully the kids see no barriers and they are busy unravelling the washing line in the damp mist when he decides to give it one last try and vroom, he’s off and not looking back it seems, heading bravely into the remote, rollicky foreground and I can but follow.

We set up camp at the furthest point possible. The sun breaks through as we set to work pitching the enormous family tent – a tent within a tent fronted by a kitchen/living area with doors and windows. All of the girl guide/scouting powers between us are summoned to launch this monster. Two of the marques throw up their own tents in minutes as we huff and puff for what seems like an hour beside them. A pear cider in the sun lends a little perspective to the situation and we collapse on the chairs admiring our creation as it flaps lopsidedly in the wind. We have possibly chosen the only spot around with a cross wind.

Then we pack the fun into the hours that remain to us. Body boarding. Barbecuing. Fishing off the rocks at full tide. There’s no-one else here. Just the seven of us. And a dog. A dog that turns up every time we come here and swims with the boys and stays with us as if she’s ours. Will not leave us. Loyal. Sweet. Fun. Except when barbecuing. Then she’s a nightmare of sniffing and snaffling and leaping around. They want to keep her. They want to feed her. ‘Can we please just, please just…’ We want her to go home. Tonight above all. Will you please just, please, go home.

After fishing at sundown we cook soup on the fire. They were hoping it would be a fish, but, well, it’s tomato soup, followed by toasting marshmallows.

I’m busy zipping up the various doors and windows of the front of the monster when I notice. Hundreds of midges or mosquitoes or whatever have taken refuge inside, waiting. In our thorough, not to be out-witted preparations, blood thirsty insects had not featured. We are in Ireland after all. He sits by the fire with the kids as they enthusiastically toast – charring outer skins around lethal bubbling pink and white liquid sugar middles. I should be out there with them. Instead I sit on the floor of the living area, shining my torch around, mesmerised by the quantity, picturing all the red bumps and discomfort of tomorrow. Then I leap up and set about on a murderous squishing squashing spree. It’s surprisingly easy. They are laid back creatures. They do not fight their fate. They hang from the tent lining inviting my thumb. There is a speckled blood design taking effect in the front living area, chiming in with the rustic environs, enhancing the decor. At least there will be no vicious itching, scratching and bleeding amongst the crew.

By 11.30 the kids noises die down and we shine the torches at one another, wondering if we are too exhausted to eat anything ourselves. A massive box of food sits right beside us. We could rummage. Or we could just crack open another cider and be done with it. Which we opt for. And a few sips in we are taken by a fit of the giggles. All the planning. All the preparation. All the mini-scrapes. It’s got the better of us. ‘Da-ad the dog is trying to get into my tent’ marque 1 calls from yonder. We are laughing hysterically now. ‘Mum, what does neurotic mean?’ marque 2 calls from the inner tent. Tears roll to accompany the laughter. We are done in.

I am woken by something pinging off my face. I look around to see what’s thrashing about when it dawns on me. Rain. It’s pooling above. Pooling and then pouring inexplicably in. We’re sleeping in the living area and not the inner tent. I peep into the snoozing kids and it’s bone dry in there. In the grand design that is this monster tent, it’s fine for half of it not to be waterproof. We dive in on top of the kids and wait for the rain to clear.

‘Mum, Dad’ the roars of marque 4 and 5 echo around. ‘The dog is killing a sheep, come quick’. Sure enough our all night companion is down on the beach, straddled on top of a lamb, jaws clenched around the it’s neck. He roars, the greatest bellow he can muster, and the dog leaves the lamb who lies there looking pretty dead, but then springs up and jumps onto a rock in the sea. ‘Maybe they’re just play-fighting’ marque 5 suggests as the starving looking mutt scarpers. Indeed. Thankfully this incident puts them off begging to keep the dog.

We return to the tent and wait for the promised scorcher to arrive. He pops to the car to recharge his phone and listen to the news. Moments later he is back. ‘Pack up your stuff everyone, we’re leaving’. I look up for the wink, the smile, the little sign of a joke. ‘There’s a yellow weather warning for the country. Flooding, thunder. We have to get going or the cars might get stuck here’. We re-pack swiftly, albeit sodden, eighteen hours after our arrival. Before breakfast can be had. It’s just as well that we jam packed it in, creating the memories while the sun shone – we reckon that must’ve been the scorcher last night. This brief intense camping trip will be the highlight of the summer. They’ll talk about it as if we did nothing else at all. Meanwhile the pooped parents swear blind that they’ll never, ever do it again!

A recently purchased new-old second car has changed things. As he needs to be able to attend meetings here, there and everywhere, and puffing around on public transport, showing up wet/late/disorientated was beginning to lose it’s appeal, we began to moot the idea of a purchase. The mooting was seized upon and accelerated by marque 1 who happens to have an avid interest in cars. He set about researching for good reliable bargains with a touch of class, and before we knew what was happening we found ourselves at a garage gazing at what seemed to fit the bill exactly. Now taking a major steer from a 13 year old child on the purchase of something as significant as a car may seem like mere folly. Time will tell. I had to concede that the unusual dark colour – highlighted by the cream leather seats – was to my liking, and this fact combined with the bargain price ticked all my boxes. I took off in the tatty older synthetically upholstered jeep and let the lads ensure the mechanics were equally as appealing.

The purchase threw us into a quandary. For the first time ever we mooted the idea of taking two cars to the Connemara. He might need to be free to attend meetings from the holidays. To pop backwards and forwards. We could divide up the crew. Flexibility. Space. A no brainer really, except in my brain which had clocked up all sorts of potential difficulties, the first of which being the fact that I’ve never done the drive, and will probably end up in Sligo.
‘But you don’t know the way’ marque 2 chirped cheerily when we told him of our two car plan.
The second difficulty was how we would divide seeing as they would all, surely, fight to go in the ‘new’ car.
‘I want to go with you’ marque 2 announced immediately after possibly seeing a flash of a crest fallen face. ‘I want to go in the jeep with you’. Even though it’s tatty, the air conditioning doesn’t work, and I don’t know the way. Ah god, that’s loyalty.

Buoyed up by his support we put the plan into action. I was assaulted by niggles of doubt though. It was the choosing that did it to me. My mind set to catastrophic mode I felt like a bystander watching them select their fate. What if they choose me and something goes wrong? What if they choose him and something goes wrong? Marque 2 and 3 are thick as thieves and did not relish being separated for the journey. When it came to the moment, they left one another doing their secret handshake, promising to be reunited at the stop off in the city. What if?? On the plus side I could collapse the whole back row of the jeep and bung in all we needed with ease. I got to take marque 1 (directions), marque 2 (loyalty) and marque 5 (safety). It was argued that the jeep is safer than a smaller car, adding to my niggles about why the hell we were splitting up in the first place.

We nodded to one another, us parents, setting off on this perilous mission. And then I stalked him all the way to Galway. He did not make one lane change without me mimicking, and it turned out to be great cat and mouse fun. Marque 2 and 3 were skyping one another (ah god) and there was plenty of leg room and no complaints. It was all pretty civilised. Except for the one ultra hairy moment, when I thought right, this is it, brace yourselves.

The sky opened to a torrent and no kidding, there was un-windscreen wiper-able whiteness, zero visibility, and I knew he was ahead but I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t see anything and we were on the 120 km motorway and I didn’t know if a vehicle doing the 120 ks was up my arse or not, so I couldn’t slow down or change lanes or do anything but keep going and pray that it’d be over as suddenly as it started. Which it was, in fairness.

We pulled in to our stop off place in Galway and parked side by side. Grinning it has to be said, all seven delighted to be reunited for the re-fuelling. My own grin wide and unshifting, chuffed – all safely here and not one car got between us all the way from Dublin. The lads swapped around cars for the last leg. Usually we arrive, all falling out of the jeep, sweaty, sticky, irritable after the cramped conditions. A civilised crew disembarked from the two vehicles, not a squabble in sight. Usually we feel we have to get them to the beach for a run, immediately. Not this time. We relax. Have a cuppa. Stroll around the town. They purchase body boards at a bargain price, stash them under their arms and stroll back around the town. People on the street put their thumbs up at the boys and say ‘cool’. One tourist, smiling, counting puts four fingers up and then asks ‘four?’. ‘Five’ I say smiling back at him and his smile broadens further. We have arrived.

You quickly remember all the little things you should’ve got done while they were in school. You’re so busy tying up all the ends that come with the closing of the school year that you put off some of the real stuff. The mind is clogged with collections for teachers. School tours. School tests. Sports day. Homework. Mums meeting evenings. Parties. Presents. All multiplied by. As one mum said it’s as frenzied as Christmas. And then it’s phew. They’re off. It’s over. Relax.

Except that you forgot to make appointments to get stuff done with the car. With the old subsidence issue. With the failing eyes. And now you must do all these things with the tribe in tow. Otherwise there will be no trip to the West. No lenses delivered. No house standing to return to.

You bundle four of them into the car for the exciting wheel alignment trip. But you are told that there is a dangerous fraying at the edges of the back two tyres. Blow-outs on the motor-way are forecast. You look at their little faces and the face of the sales-man. You wonder if you’re being had. The tread is well deep on them. You book for the tyres to be replaced anyway. Which entails ordering said tyres and returning the following day. You can`t even get this one off the list. You are walking on a water-filled mattress getting nowhere. A trip to Dealz lifts the spirits. Washing up brushes and face clothes to freshen things up. Everything costs 1.49. Even my new iPad pouch. Yeah! A trip to the chemist next door cheer things up further. A few little necessities for the holidays. The shop assistant lady is trying to show you that a free gift of lurid nail varnish looks a whole lot better when you paint glitter on top of it. Then she counts the kids and asks right there in front of them ‘how DO you COPE with FOUR BOYS?’ and she’s shaking her head while telling you that you don’t look like someone with four boys (whatever that’s supposed to look like) as you register them taking in the poor you attitude for the very first time. You consider the response options.
1) I find pinching them hard works a treat. This gets a laugh when someone comments on how well behaved they are and wonders how you do it. Not for here.
2) I don’t know how I cope, but I’m being punished for my sins, obviously. That might work here.
3) They’re great fun, I love it busy and all as it is with lots of kids. The truth. Not worthy here.
‘Five’ you say instead to the slack-jawed lady. ‘I have five boys’ and you smile to the horror stuck eyes, turn on your flip-flops and leave without your free gift.

***

They are well used to positive comments from adults about them as a tribe. ‘Make sure you tell your mum she’s really cool for having five lovely boys’ was one they reported to me last summer, beaming. It was in the West where celebrating big families seems natural. There’s no tutting, head shaking, raised eye-brows in sight. A calm nod of appreciation, a smile and a twinkle is the norm. I’ve even been told I’m a ‘good woman’ courtesy of the old breeding. And while the feminist in me rattles a little at this I leave it go. It makes for a nice change.

‘I don’t like it when someone comes straight out and says something negative like that. It doesn’t feel right. Why would she feel she can comment when she doesn’t even know us?’ marque 2 chimes, as precisely as I’m thinking it which is scary. Maybe I’ve been muttering over the years.
‘She’s just reflecting what she feels our family would be like for her. She’s not really commenting on us at all, but on herself’. Which is something I’ve learnt along the way, wise old thing that I am now. Don’t take other people’s comments personally. They are really only talking about themselves. Still an’ all, not in front of the children, eh?

We drop the car in the next morning and walk along for the sight test. By the end of the day both the eyes and the car will be match fit. I receive a phone call telling me that the brake pads and discs are worn away, scorched and dangerous. They will need replacing too. Of course they will. But would they if himself had put the car in? We end up car-less, parts to be ordered, traipsing home on the bus. Which is a mini-adventure as these inconveniences often turn out to be. I remember a Saturday a few years ago. We were on the N11 heading for a sun-shine filled day out in Powerscourt. A police check was along the road and we squirmed a little knowing that the tax had just gone out. The guard pulled us over.
‘Your tax and NCT are out of date’. Damn.
‘Yes, we do the tax online and it hasn’t arrived out to us yet’.
‘But you’ve no NCT either. This is serious. You do know that we can seize the car for this’. We do know you can do whaty whaty woo? Gobbledygook to us. We’ve never heard of a car being seized for out of date tax/NCT. Insurance we’d understand. What about a simple fine and sure we’ll book in for the NCT post-haste.
Nope. The guard insisted on seizing the car. Which in effect means being turfed out at the side of the dual carriageway. To get home however you will. Evicted on the spot.
‘Is that police-man going to take our car away from us’ one of the little marques piped up.
Jesus.
‘You get out and talk to him. See if he’ll let us get the kids home first’.
So I leapt out and gestured to the many a child in the car, including marque 5 who was still at a push-chair stage. He stuck to his line about seizing, but let us drive the kids home and return the car immediately. Proof of tax and NCT booking and a not immodest fee was what it would take to have the car released back to us on the Monday. But we had the best weekend, busing and training and doing things we just normally wouldn’t do.
‘I’m glad that police-man took our car. It’s much more fun without it’ marque 3 chimed. They would, they said, have so much more to share at news time in school, courtesy of the thoughtful man. Every cloud and all that jazz.

Later on when I get the bus with the tribe again to collect our out of the danger zone car, I’ll see if it still feels like an adventure. And next June I’ll be super. I’ll rise above the trivial clogging bits and remember to do all the important stuff before school ends. I swear!

The long summer evenings of blissful light and heat have been reeking havoc with any sort of reasonable bedtime for all of us. Which would be grand if it wasn’t for the school mornings. By the time the last of the kids is asleep we feel we owe one another at least two hours of something or other. It’s often 1.30 before the contact lenses begin to be prised out. When the alarm sings and chimes merrily in the full dawn light I wonder how I’ve managed to do this to myself, again.

They lie on the couches downstairs, curled up, falling straight back to sleep even though I’ve successfully roused them. I find myself dressing all of them now as they flop and fall like rag dolls around me. The shoes are all in ones now and I’m squeezing them into too small or tightening too big old versions which nobody is happy about. We are all sick and tired of these agitating mornings. Which is why when I do an about-turn at the school gate, all four deposited almost on time – secondary guy snoozing on – I dream of something to recover with. If I were a smoker, a little congratulatory hit of a puff would be it. If I were a runner I could make good my escape from the school gate on foot, and that would be it. Something to mark the change in pace from freneticism to phew. I have yet to find out what that is.

The overall pace is set to change. Eight lovely weeks without those mornings stretch ahead. Curling up recuperating whenever, wherever.
Marque 5 wakes me. It’s blissfully 10 o’clock. ‘So summer holidays is when no-one wakes you, you don’t have to be anywhere, you have fun and you can just have a little relax’. Precisely my son.

Except we’ve set a sort of fervent pace of fun for this, the first weekend, which may trip us up down the road. We whipped them from their last school labours and catapulted them into the fun fair in Dun Laoghaire. There’s usually a week or two of begging which precedes anything like this. Delayed gratification does something useful to the child’s frontal lobe for later life skills – or so I was told at some child development talk. Don’t spoil, simply and traditionally put. As it’s marque 4’s actual birthday we ditch the begging delayed gratification phase. They can’t believe their luck.
‘Thank-you so so much for bringing us to the carnival’ marque 3 repeats over and over, throwing his arms around me happily, unselfconsciously. One minute he’s spotting the Ferris wheel from a walk along the coast and calling out ‘oh my god, there’s a carnival in Dun Laoghaire!’ and the next he’s at it and a little stunned.

Marque 5 needs an adult for the bumper cars and I nominate myself and they are wide-eyed with the excitement of their mum joining in. Until, that is, marque 2/3’s car whams so forcibly into the back of mine that our heads fling forwards and then back, and I’m thinking whip-lash as marque 2 leaps out of his car to apologise. ‘Noooo’ I call out over the thumping music, picturing him being mown down or legs crushed at this fun affair. ‘Sorry mum’ and he is handing me something. He has spotted my sunglasses on the floor which must’ve been flung from my head during my whip lash moment. Great.

The being on tenter-hooks feeling continues for the rest of the time at the fun-fair. Are they strapped in properly? What if there’s something wrong with the latch on his one? Why, oh why, does he have to do that g-force thing. Splat. The word that dances across my mind, as I smile and take pictures of them all. This queer mixture of feeling that a parent has watching their off-spring, exhilarated with the excitement of speed and height, and praying for it to be over quickly, safely. All this while remembering exactly how much I loved the thrill of the speed and the height myself. Thankfully with no memory of a hovering anxious looking parent. Oh well. Marque 4 & 5 ‘win’ prizes at hooking and netting things. This I like, rip off and all that it is. Our time is topped off by Teddy’s 99 ice-creams all round. Yeah! We did it, all intact, all happy, and the adrenalin begins to drop off again.

The tent that marque 4 got from his brothers pops up in the garden and marque 2,3 &4 decide that they will sleep out in it. We go along with it, expecting to see them return before real darkness. We eat and we chat and we sip wine and we wait. And wait. Until he slides the back door open onto the darkness and the quietness. He stands, listening. ‘They are asleep’ he announces. Which while thrilling poses a counter problem for us. Is it responsible parenting to rock on up to bed and leave them alone out there? I nominate him to sleep on the couch near the back door, just in case. He accepts his nomination gracefully and I don’t see him again until dawn when the lads have come in to him on a high.
‘We did it. We slept a night in a tent by ourselves!’ They curl up and sleep again on the couches, blissfully content with their achievement.

We take them to Seapoint for a quick dip but the fun unfurls and we stay for hours. A massive seagull circles above and then swoops down dropping something close by. It looks like a nest. We investigate and discover a huge crab, petrified, unmoving. The lads are keen to rescue it before the return of the swoop and scoop. A couple of late teenage (beautiful!) girls join in and help them. One picks the huge crab up as marque 5 cries out for her not to ‘it’ll pinch you’ and she calmly shows them all how to hold a crab by the body. They meander off down to a pool of water and set him free. He plays dead for a while, after his beaked excursion into the sky, and eventually buries himself to whoops of joy.

It is Sunday morning when marque 5 wakes me with his comment – so this is what summer holidays are all about. Yes, but there’s a disquieting feeling that we may have peaked too soon on this, the first weekend of the hols. What with the fun fair, the camping out and the seaside frolicking. Their expectations will be sky high.
‘What are we doing today then Mum?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all my sweets’.
We need to take our foot off the pedal and pace ourselves for smatterings of fun stretching out over the next eight weeks!

We have perfect spacing until the next birthday. For four lovely weeks a year, between the end of May and the end of June, we bask in the glory of some sort of symmetry. This is when the kids go down or up in twos. 13, 11, 9, 7, 5. We are that organised. Fair play to us. We love to be asked their ages during these weeks. We trip them off smiling, not stumbling like we do the rest of the year. We tease marque 4 for the impending skewing of our pattern by his hand. We do this each year and he finds it funny (we think!). 5, 8, 9, 11, 13. Now we’re mere disorganised incompetents again. Oh well. It gets worse. By November it’s 5, 8, 9, 11, 14. By January 5, 8, 10, 11, 14. Then the competence breather again in May-June. 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. Hurray!

The party decision looms and with the disaster in mind from one year ago we are keen to get it right this time. Last year I blindly accepted an invitation to share a ‘football party’ with two of his class mates. I accepted knowing that marque 4 has little or no interest in football.

I myself would be wondering what football has got to do with a party. However marque 4 is an easy going easily pleased chap most of the time. He’ll just muck in I told myself and the other mothers. I sold him a pup. I stood on the sidelines and watched his little world crumble. The high point of a football party, it seems, is that the birthday boy gets to be captain and pick his team. Except there were three birthday boys and, well, two teams. The keen as mustard football birthday boys were selected as captains and marque 4 stood by the wall waiting to be picked, his face clouding as the captains set about choosing the best players for their respective teams. As they were getting down to the last few the tears started to roll. He was neither captain nor player at his own party.
‘Oh dear’ this compliant mum said to one of the others. ‘He is upset now. Perhaps he should’ve been vice captain of one of the teams’.
The other mum cup-handed hollers to her birthday boy to hand over the reins of captainship to marque 4 until half-time. I knew then as I do now that it wouldn’t work. Marque 4 shares a trait with his mother. Once upset he retreats and recuperates inwardly. He was not about to run with the ball and pretend that it didn’t hurt. That the team he didn’t pick was his own. He tried for a minute, in fairness to him, but the tears just got in the way.

I stood on the sidelines chastising myself for the botched party I had visited upon him. Note to self: if your child doesn’t like an activity then don’t book him a party in said activity. I stood there thinking about all the fun things he loves and how anything, absolutely anything would be better than this. He was upset and humiliated at his own party. I thought about how his father can sometimes magic him out of himself when upset. Black humour – marque 4 has the best quirky sense of humour – and vicious tickling. In the absence of said father (the mothers were running this show) I didn’t think whipping him off the pitch and whispering black humour while tickling him in front of his class was really the ticket. It was an hour and a half later during food time when he re-emerged twinkling. One of the mums started a game of Simon Says. Simple as that. A fun old-fashioned party game where everyone’s in with a chance.

This year I get to choose. I consult with the birthday boy. We both agree it is to be an outdoor ‘Survival Party’ that we share with one other (their birthdays are one day apart at the end of term). The other birthday boy is equally pleased with it. Now we don’t know exactly what it entails but we’re due to meet at a mysterious woods to be told. The car is packed. Cake, candles, party bags, drinks, four brothers. Now we just have to get there. We set off in the sweltering heat (thankful for it!) to find these woods hidden in an estate somewhere between Dundrum and Lamb’s Cross. Except google maps seems to direct us off down the M50.
‘Oh, I recognise this road’ marque 3 pipes up. ‘We’re on our way to Galway’. Cheers. The clock is ticking. We are careering on in a seemingly intractable wrong direction.
‘Just get off the motorway’ I helpfully grunt – amongst other things – and he laughs as the one way system lures us on stretching endlessly ahead with no turn off in sight. I’m sure I’ve had a few nightmares about this sort of scenario. Inviting a truck load of seven year olds to a woods and failing to turn up. Panic is setting in. I snap my head around to see if it’s reached marque 4 yet. Yep.
‘It’s going to be as big a disaster as last year’ he wails and the tears are close by. I’d hoped he had forgotten all about last year.
‘We’re never going to get there’. Sob. While I feel like joining him and having a little wail myself, I hear a calm voice of re-assurance. We will indeed make it. We have loads of time. When what I’m really thinking about is how he cried through his party last year and this year he’s not going to show up at all. He doesn’t believe me, naturally, my reassurances are missing a certain something, and I’m out of tricks when I hear the father muttering some black humour followed by a golden laugh. Phew! Then he illegally talks to his iPhone asking for audible help to get us out of this mess. I’m close to hysterical laughter when a deliciously calm obliging robot takes over. The soothing voice directs us back through twists and turns we would never have guessed. We screech up at the woods with a minute to spare and only one waiting parent and child. We emerge from the car and smile the stress off our faces. We’re all set for the adventure ahead.
The party is wholesome, magical fun. The sunlight sparkles through the trees casting a mosaic on the forest floor. We watch the instructors deliver their fun messages, grateful to be outdoors, neither too hot nor too cool amongst the greenery. There is a team element for part of it. Two teams are set the challenge of building shelters to survive in. Marque 4 stands proudly and selects his three brothers first of all followed by his mates. He is delighted. As he has spent a large portion of his soon to be eight years making shelters/dens both indoors and out to play in, this is right up his street. The fun begins. They have to guard their shelters while constructing them. They can sneak out and catch people from the other team to be their slaves for two minutes. Squeals and laughter rebound about the woods. They swear blind that they can see a fox. Fingers crossed it’s not a wild rabid dog. Everyone is having a ball. The only real concern that I have is for the potential of gouged eyes. Sticks are a big feature when making and guarding a shelter. ‘Your son had a great time at the party, sorry about the missing left eye’. Nobody else seems too concerned so apart from my seizing of a couple of exceptionally dangerous looking long pointy ones, we can relax.

The party is topped off by gathering kindling for a fire. They rummage around to find the driest tiny sticks. They are competing together now to come up with the goods for the best woodland fire. They are quizzed about what might be needed to get a good fire going. I like it, using their heads too. Sticking their hands up with an array of ideas, oxygen getting a little clap. The fire gets underway and the birthday boys are the first to toast marshmallows followed by all the others. They sit in a circle toasting and chatting and laughing. More food is dished out. The candles are lit on two birthday cakes and the singing breaks out. Only missing the beer the parents jest amongst themselves. The birthday boys are awarded survival certificates for competence in shelter building and fire making in a woodland wilderness. Nice touch.

The fire and mud clean-dirty troop of boys dance down the forest path, loot bags in hand, and are collected by exuberant parents commenting on what a great idea for a party it is and weren’t we so lucky with the weather. Everyone seems to be smiling. Even marque 5 smiles as he rubs a dock leaf on an arm full of nettle stings. Keen not to let his new older survivor friends down he stifles any urge to moan about his bristling arm.

The bright-eyed energised survivors are safely home. A bottle of chilled Prosecco glistens and glasses clink in the evening sun. Cheers, to getting it right this time and to survival!