Today, I got up at about 10:30, ate sausages and toast, and drank tea.

Then I went to mass with Cáit and Leo. Fr McGirr made reference to our match last week. After mass I skipped off home, gathered the rest and we went to the beach for a puck around.

Had there a good wee yarn with Mairtin McKinney, erstwhile colleague at the University, all round good guy. He regularly runs the beach despite a longstanding dodgy knee. Maith thú a Mhairtin.

After pucking the beach we headed to Watertop Farm. It was shut so we went to Cushendun. Angela and myself were there once years ago and we fed Johann the tethered goat Digestive biscuits. Johann became famous for being slaughtered in the industry induced panic over foot and mouth in 2001.

What threat a single goat in the middle of Cushendun posed to the meat trade baffled me then and still does. He lives on in the form of a lovely bronze statue at the front of the old pictuersque Cushendun Hotel (is it shut or open?).

It’s amazing what you can do in Cushendun for an hour and half or so. Two swans elegantly glided hither and thither across the small harbour. The children were asking me if the sea beyond there is the Sea of Moyle, recalling the Children of Lír. I could see how the location could prompt such a story. I wasn’t sure.

On the way home we stopped in Ballycastle for a while and had ice cream. There in the Park is a sweeping sculpture representing the Children of Lír Flying over the Sea of Moyle. Poetic, lyrical. Further talk from the children of the beautiful poignant story. It is a lovely setting.

After that we drove home and had slow cooked pork for dinner. A tired Gráinne called to watch the match highlights.

A wholly mundane day, doing little of substance.

And it was magic.