Games being rained off

When I was a teenager, one of the best things that could happen to me was that games would be rained off.

It wasn't so much that I didn't like sport then (although I wasn't really crazy about sport then), it was more that it meant that something you were supposed to be doing, you didn't have to do. I would never have had the guts to bunk off at school, and this was the closest I got to unanticipated freedom, and I loved it, even if it meant sitting in a classroom and doing your homework. I guess the adult equivalent is having a meeting unexpectedly postponed -- that's always a good day.

Anyway, I thought this particular upside of rainy weather had ended when I left school. But now, with a 6 year old getting into the Gaelic games of football and hurling, and me having to take turns watching  -- and even, God help the future of Cork GAA, helping out -- that particular hope is back again.


And I've also remembered that there was another, dangerous and fearsome, side to the prayers for bad weather on sport days -- weather that's miserable, but not so bad that games is off, meaning you have to stand around in the drizzle (teenage me, or dad me, participating in sport mostly involves standing around).

Light showers forecast for 6pm tonight. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.