A great friend of mine, who is German and living in Ireland, recently wrote an article about the things the we do and say here that make us “Irish.”

One of the things she wrote was:
“You know you are in Ireland when a freshly retired friend sums up his plans for the future: “It’s great to have the time to be busy!”

It appealed to me because the person she was quoting was myself and I felt, as one does, there is a core of truth in what I had said.
Because people know I am freer than I was when fully employed with running a restaurant I get asked to do a great variety of different things which often have me running about in a “busy” fashion.
This wasn’t always my experience.
When working in the restaurant I was constrained in a kitchen for most of the day working, I like to think, in a more measured and methodical fashion.

This morning we decided was going to be a lazy one, lazier for me than Sile who got up and got the Sunday papers so that at 11.45 I was still lying happily in the bed, papers around me, when my mobile rang downstairs.
It was WLR, our local radio station, I had promised to be on “Sunday View” which is an hour long, live panel show about what had been on that morning’s papers.
I had totally forgotten.
It was going out on air at 12.00, 15 minutes time.
I bounded into clothes and out the door, broke several speed limits and arrived into the studio just thirty seconds before the show went on air.
All the way out I was very aware that, unlike the presenter and the other two panellists, I had missed the hour long briefing which happens before the show, I was going to go in with a huge disadvantage.
I kept telling myself that if I just kept quiet for the first 15 minutes I could squint
at the papers during the ad breaks and make some effort to get myself up to date.
I had just time to hear, and write down , the names of the other panellists before we went on air.
I won’t trivialise the subjects we were talking about by mentioning them here.
The first one was a great relief to me.
I had given a dinner party on Friday night and it was one of the subjects we had talked about at great length around the table. I was effectively briefed.

The first ad break came and I was reaching frantically for papers when I saw a spasm of terror pass over the presenters face, the ads had crashed, we were going to have to run the whole hour’s show without any breaks.
The terror passed on to me easily, I didn’t even know what the topics were going to be.
Unbelievably the whole hour passed in a flash, equally unbelievably most of the topics we discussed had been discussed on Friday night chez nous.
Having had no preparation I had to listen to what was said and, instead of having a prepared stance I had to make my mind up there and then what my position would be and then defend it.
It was exhilarating!
As I drove home from the studio I was thinking that sometimes there are advantages to the sort of spontaneity that can happen if you don’t have the time to prepare.