Imagine the time between knowing you are alive to birdsong, the smell of cooking, the sound of children, the laughter of others. And that instant when you hover on the precipice. . . an instant. Neither here. Nor there. Who knows how long it is. Does the world slow down, ending in slow motion or is it over. What do you hear? At that stage, do you care? Do you really give a fuck? Do you now? Will you then? Will it be too late?

The home detritus forgotten. All the menialities, trivialities, banalities. The ties, that tie you to what. What really matters? In the end nothing. Have you done a good job. Or a bad job with whatever you were given. With this life you were given and what you’ve done with it. Did you try hard, were you honest. Did anyone care. As the last bits of gas bubble out will you be happy or sad. Good or bad as the song says. Will you even care?

Will time pass slowly, will you get the chance to look again at what you did. To pause. Will a great voice say to you, with the benefit of hindsight now, would you like to reconsider that, would you do that the same way? Would you do different?

And what then? What if your answer was no? That’s it. I made my choice, I took my chance and that’s what I did then. I wouldn’t change jack.

And, with the people gathered around you, what if there was someone there you didn’t care for. Would you be able to summon the last bit of your very being and tell them to get out, to go away. Imagine the last sound echoing through your dead ears was a fool you couldn’t bear in life, now destroying your very death. What would you do? Sit bolt upright in the bed assuming you were in a bed and tell them to fuck off. They would of course be offended. But what of your offence? You can’t offend the dying. Can you?

Or would you be better saying nothing. Letting yourself die without them knowing what you really thought. But at that stage would you really care.

Would you?

There are many symptoms of the credit crunch around the country these days. There’s been much talk about admission prices to GAA Championship matches being too high and club fundraising being badly hit. But, as always, when Mammon closes a door, someone else opens a window.

In our club, we’ve noticed a new and not altogether unwelcome trend. What’s that you ask? Well, there’s more Young Under-8 Mammies In Every Saturday than ever before. YUMIES we’ll call them and yep, if its glamour you want, our indoor sessions are the place to be. And because they are there our coaching cohort is rising in direct proportion to the glamour quotient.

The economics? Well, previously YUMIES would have considered the Saturday morning training session the perfect time for a bit of retail therapy. Mugs like myself were unwitting accomplices to the Celtic Tiger in that we coached the kids so that the YUMIES could shop till they dropped. But now, with times harder, belts tighter and the credit card well and truly crunched, shredded and in the bin, the YUMIES need something else to do of a Saturday morning.

And what better way to pass the time than to cheer on every kick from young Seamus who, God help him, was born with the co-ordination of a baby giraffe on ice. His ma doesn’t see that tho’. Or the sad and sorry case of Finbar Fogarty who has recurring goldfish syndrome – every time something is explained to him he instantly forgets it – an invaluable skill in the intriguing world of international espionage but useless in the cut and thrust of an Under 8 Blitz. Still, he’s the apple of mother’s eye. Likewise young Gervaise Johnston whose father hails from Cheshire, thereby fuelling the misguided suspicion of at least one of our coaches that gaelic games are an inherited and inherent feature of the ‘Irish condition’. For them a drop of English blood is enough to taint the prospects of a successful club career. Us progressive thinkers argue our point, but young Gervaise unwittingly and effortlessly proves the opposite each time he tries to kick a ball. His sweet and fragrant mother looks on, unconcerned.

Our club decided to ignore worries about player burnout and bans on collective training – all so that we could continue our Under 8 coaching programme over the winter months. During the summer we traipsed our intrepid young team around the County with the usual mix of enjoyment and abject disillusionment. The former generated through watching all the kids build their game sense as the summer progressed, passing, moving, shooting when it was time to shoot and generally learning the ways of the gaelic warrior but most of all enjoy it. The disillusionment brought on by the occasional moron on the sideline that should know better.

Anyhow, we decided our players needed the winter practice to avoid the hedonistic attractions of foreign games and to fend off the bushrangers with the oval balls that might seek to steal our Under 8s from before our eyes. Further motivation was provided by one particular match when the opponents, dressed all in black were seen spraying on Lynx deodorant before the game and listening intently to Al Pacino exhort them to look for the inches all around them. The black Under Armour skins they all wore and the crates of energy drinks told us all we needed to know about shamateurism amongst the Under 8s.

Not that we wished to join them, or even necessarily beat them. Big hallions of cubs with scary black gear smelling of perfume don’t scare our fellas. Not when we are the better ball players – and we are. That’s a good place to be but only one way to get there. Winter indoor training.

Besides all that – we now have a secret weapon. The YUMIES. Such was the exotic and beguiling fragrance of one of the YUMIES as she floated past that Packie, a grizzled veteran of the County team with twenty three years on the senior squad, lost the run of himself mid team talk to the young fellas and muttered “Bejaze”, eyes a- glazed. Another young lady, a market researcher by profession I’m told, politely asked one of the coaches if she could record the number of touches each player had on her BlackBerry to see if there were any trends. He was overcome, beguiled even and could only mutter “yes, that’s fine.” One young executive had brought her laptop to training. We discovered afterwards she was downloading drills from the GAA website for one of the coaches. Another parent, herself an athlete of some renown, offered to assist the actual coaching. Her coaching attire raised many’s an eyebrow amongst other things but when she demonstrated how to bend and lift, the coaching session stopped and jaws dropped in wonder and amazement.

The matter of the YUMIES was discussed at a committee meeting. Some claimed they were a distraction. Other claimed this was a visible asset – greater parental involvement. The acid test was when a leading ladies designer store ran a bumper retail event offering all manner of finery, at a ridiculously attractive price. To a woman our cohort of YUMIES turned up at training – this one bringing fruit juice, that one bringing snacks, the other recording stats. Our statuesque coach doing her thing and the rest being generally helpful.

Credit Crunch? What Credit Crunch? These YUMIES have just discovered a whole new way of living. And don’t they just love it!

So London’s burning. Parliament is recalled. A football international is cancelled. You would think that Regent Street was in flames, the House of Commons about to be sacked and a horde of hoodie wearing hoods lined up about to torch the Palace and to pillage any decent lookin wenches they may find therein.

Yet and still the Metropolitan Polis take their time to don their riot gear. I suppose here in the North we are used seeing skulls cracked at the slightest sign of a riot, maybe a plastic bullet or two launched at an unsuspecting teenager and watercannon hosing people off their feet. It is an unusual level of restraint by the Met. Maybe since they were embroiled in the News of the World imbroglio, they are more circumspect. That would be a first.

It would be so un-British and definitely not beffitting of and English gentleman like Cameron and his Clegg to send in the troops to blow the rioters off track. It’s one thing thumping a few Paddies on the head in far off Belfast. A different thing doing it in London.

There’s something about us people over here that means we deserve a good craic on the nut every so often, just to make us lie down. However it is a different proposition taking an almighty dump on your own doorstep with the world’s media watching and the Olympics a year off.

It confirms what we have long known that although we are apparently all ‘British’ under the one flag, in fact there are different rules for bored teenagers in London and  Londonderry.

Tell me this, what happens next year if the whole thing kicks off once again when the full glare of the Olympic spotlight is on London?

PrayForLondon was trending on Twitter, people organised Twitter feeds to arrange the clean up. It’s all terribly civilised and good natured, Dunkirkesque even.

An English Rugby fan asked me once in Donoghue’s in Baggot Street as we skulled pints of Guinness:

‘Why does no-one like us?’

My reply was ‘how long have you got?’

That perhaps explains why people on this side of the pond are watching with a mixture of disinterest and faint bemusement. The profile of the people charged with looting and public disorder was published in the Daily Telegraph with all the relish of the landed gentry holding aloft a pair of dirty socks.

A soldier steals a guitar worth £2000 and tries to sell it the next day. A Law student is caught in possession of £5000 of stolen electronics. Some other fella gets 12 months in two lots of six because he looted two different shops.

What possessed these people. The herd mentality? The lowest common denominator? Greed? The feeling they wouldn’t get caught. An orderly line in a shoe shop to try on looted shoes. Are these the demons that lie inside everyone, dormant waiting the chance to burst out? These weren’t the disaffected youth of the newspapers. It reminds me of student days and wanton acts of stupidity.

Pray for London. Indeed.

Peter: Dad which hand does Rory McIlroy lift his ball out of the hole with.

Me: I don’t know Peter. Ask Mum.

Leo: Dad you know that song Lacrimae by Moby.

Me: No.

Leo: Well it’s the longest song on my iPod.

I was walking through our utility room when one of the cats that come and go round our house ran over my foot.

I considered for an instance if it had been a squirrel or worse again a mouse or a rat what I would have done? Why do we have these varmints in a state of semi domestication in our homes. It is absurb when you think about it.

I read some woman in the Irish News today who in her spare time catches feral cats and checks them for Cat AIDS and Leukaemia. The question rising in my throat was why? Imagine having so little to do that you can spend your time chasing cats.

Who was it that decided to tame the common cat? We have one called Dylan named after its predecessor also named Dylan after Bob but pronounced Deelon. It’s a long story but the cat responded to being called in that way one time I had too much wine.

The other cat is called Mugsy after the Tyrone footballer. He is a neutered Tom. The cat not the footballer that is. He only comes into the living room at night, is rarely to be seen during the day and occasionally urinates in the old downstairs toilet which is now a cloakroom/storage room.

I’ll makes the decisions about room use Cat if you don’t mind. He will lick your foot if you have no shoes on – any cat that licks my foot deserves treatment. He’s also a bit quick to put the dukes up.

Anyhow, I know some people like Cats. I don’t. Mugsy likes me but only when he is in the living room. Elsewhere in the house he runs away or swings his claws. He’d bite you too if he had the chance.

Cats. They’re cat.

Yesterday we covered 43 miles. It was horrendous. To be fair my cycling companions adopted a very encouraging attitude as we trundled along the highways and byways of Loyalist East Antrim. I felt a little abandoned and isolated if I didn’t see a Union flag every mile or two but in fairness the locals invariably obliged.

In small settlements every lamppost is well and truly marked and there isn’t much doubt whose ‘territory’ you are cycling through. What some of the brethren would think of the merry band of GAA enthusiasts cycling through their district makes me LOL.

My sister in law Schira must have been a mountain goat in a previous life. She led us up a succession of climbs, some gradual, some insidious, some just pure bastards. The road from Moss Side to the main Bushmills to Ballycastle line was a route of pain for me. All my considerable weight was pressing down on the base of my spine and for whatever reason this caused more discomfort than ever.

When we finally made it across to White Park Bay, Schira led us up to the Viewing Point. ‘It’s only half a mile up the road’ she cheerily explained. ‘Up’ was the operative word in that explanation. I cursed her every pedal of the way and when we got to the ‘Viewing Point’ I was quite the sight lolling about panting on a raised ditch. Sweat flying, backside in bits. At one stage I almost rolled of the bank down the slope onto White Park Bay. Had I done so I would have gladly dragged my sorry ass across the sand to dip it in the tempting blue seawater.

Having crossed the twenty three mile point at this stage, we pointed our tyres for the Port. The way of fewest hills our request to our leader. I don’t think I’ve ever tucked into Bushmills – either the drink or the village- the way I did on the downhill descent. One and a half miles of freewheelin. I actually felt like jumping off, just for the craic. Schira remarked that I could fair get the speed up on the down hills, but the opposite applies in that I can fair slow the speed down on the ascents. It’s a like a metaphor for life, what goes down must go up and vice versa. So for the exhilaration of tearing into Bushmills, I soon realised that all roads out lead up the hill. Long slow and painful.

At this stage less than ten from home my fellow travellers gradually disappeared over the hill. Even Martin who had covered the distance on his wife’s shopping bike complete with the shopping carrier on the back. He looked like something out of an Adam Sandler film perched on the curious women’s bike with a pair of cycling bib shorted. However, no matter what he looked like, he still bate me home. I limped in, totally and utterly fucked. No other word for it.

When I arrived back to the house, I keeled over on to the sofa an immediately fell asleep for half an hour. When I got up a bath followed by a shower restored a semblence of life, as did some beans on toast and four Jaffa cakes. The only redemption in the day was offered by Lar Corbett and his henchmen followed by a decent run out for the girls on Sunday night.

Arse in flames, spirits in the doldrums. 43 miles I think it was. Well out of my comfort zone. Big time. Soon be time to get back on the bike… and I’m dreading it.