It’s a lovely feeling to be able to walk out the door and be greeted by smiling faces and people in more colourful clothes. A long winter has taken its toll on the masses. Pale faced and weary-eyed, we have struggled doing our daily routines. Now, we have a chance to recover and bask in a little bit of sunshine.

Mozart and I love taking our daily walks in the forest now. I don’t have to put on my wellies and wade through the muddy earth. I can step daintily over the mossy woodland and keep up with a very excited Mozart running ahead. The dog owners greet me with open smiles instead of grumpy nods and even the dogs seem to behave better among themselves. Perhaps it’s just me imagining these changes. I wave at an elderly gentleman sitting on one of the wooden benches placed sporadically along the forest perimeters. His old black scottie is seated faithfully at his side. He doesn’t wave back and as I approach him, his dog lunges at Mozart. Mozart is taken by surprise and lets out a high-pitched whelp and runs back to me.

"He’s not in a very good mood today," I say (in my best dutch) lightly to the old gentleman. The gentleman looks at me and replies "Go back to where you came from and bugger off." I replied "But it’s a lovely day and it would be such a pity for me to bugger off to a cold rainy Ireland just now." His face lit up. "You come from Ireland?" And he beckoned me to sit down beside him.

He proceeded to tell me that he had lived in Ireland for many years and had travelled extensively throughout the whole country. He knew little villages and places that I myself never heard of. He had even fallen in love there but it hadn’t worked out. His wrinkled face moved softly as he talked and his lower lip began to tremble. He gave me some very good advice.

He said:
May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live
May you be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead
Dance as if no one was watching
Tell the truth – there’s less to remember
Remember – no rain – no rainbows

He got up slowly, gave me a wink and walked with his grumpy-arsed scottie in the opposite direction. I started laughing and realised that I had read these words somewhere recently.

At home, I had some Irish postcards that I had accumulated from my last visit and sure enough, written in big black letters on one of them was the Wit and Wisdom of Ireland. The gentleman’s advice was printed in bold print. He forgot one, I thought to myself:

As you slide down the bannisters of life may the splinters never point the wrong way.

Now that’s one for the road and taken heed along the way...

Niamh

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