The tundra does strange things to a man. Out here in the ice caps of Dublin 11 you find yourself with a lot of thinking time as you tackle the snowdrift on your garden path. Mostly, you’re thinking, Oh, right, so this is what manual labour feels like; well done on all those years of avoiding it.
The snow is still falling. Except now it’s falling as rain. As in, it’s raining. This is Ireland again, so of course it’s raining. Sleeting, to put a fine point on it.
Whatever it’s doing, it’s doing it quietly. The snow dropped a blanket of silence across the land for the back half of last week, shushing the mad-going world whether we liked it or not. And now, although lagging-wrapped neighbours are starting to emerge from the houses all around, there’s still no hum of traffic on the estate, no clank and clunk of Dublin Bus, no yap of kids out on their bikes. No chirp of birds overhead, no far-off echo of a tied-up hound, no nothing at all.
It all looks so peaceful when you're leaning on a borrowed shovel in the precious Outside. But it can't be. The snow has brought Christmas without the good bits
And you look around in the silence and you just know that by now, on Day Whatever It Is, the quiet is hiding sardine tins of pent-up tension behind the windows and walls as far as the eye can see. It all looks so peaceful when you’re leaning on a borrowed shovel in the precious Outside. But it can’t be. The snow has brought Christmas without the good bits. The sleeting will continue until morale improves.
From this vantage point sport has never felt so essential. Down the years you’ve heard a million variations on Voltaire’s line about God – if such-and-such didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it, etc. But because all of them exist anyway it’s an idiom that never feels particularly meaningful, the sort of jeopardy-free witticism employed by people trying to sound like they read clever.
Yet here in the sleet, as a thousand houses for kilometres around pulse with cabin fever, suddenly the phrase is given an immediate edge, a properly tangible truth. Sport in Ireland, for the overwhelming majority of people this weekend, didn’t exist. Literally didn’t exist. That’s once-in-a-lifetime stuff.
No hurling or football matches to go to. The League of Ireland programme entirely kaput. The Pro14 existing only in a some-far off Narnia that Connacht escaped to for a game against the Cheetahs. Ulster Bank League, no dice. Racing cancelled, all-weather or no all-weather. Ten greyhound meetings, all off. Super League basketball, gone. The All-Ireland field-archery championships, quivered.
Big events, small events, all zapped. It doesn’t matter whether the fixtures were going to have 30 people at them or 30,000: the loss of them for a full weekend means a suddenly blocked outlet for countless people across the country. People whose natural instinct is to get up and get out and go to something, surrounded by four walls and nothing, just like that.
We sit. We eat. We gawk at phones. We venture into the garden to make a snowman. And then we go inside and we sit. And we eat. And we gawk at phones
And that’s just the organised stuff. In the snow, the unwatched sport stops just as surely as the watched sport. There’s no pulling on the trainers and pounding out a quick five kilometres. There’s no strapping on your helmet and hitting the hills on the bike. There’s no taking advantage of the time off to stroll through a relaxing 18 holes. The swimming pool is closed. The gym couldn’t get its staff in to open up. The yoga class never stood a chance.
All of these activities, whatever their level of exertion or lack thereof, serve one purpose above all. They are ATMs for endorphins – and withdrawals are generally available whenever you please. Without them, think of all the blood not pumped, all the sweat not spilled, all the heads not cleared. Sport works away quietly like that, fixing tiny bits of people here and there, like white blood cells.
Instead, in the snow, what do we do? We sit. We eat. We gawk at phones. We venture into the garden to make a snowman, meaning that for half an hour we are upstanding bipeds again. And then we go inside and we sit. And we eat. And we gawk at phones.
Usually, this is the point at which sport would intervene. God knows, you don't get to be this size without sitting and eating and gawking at a phone while there's sport on the TV. But by now, with the best will in the world, there's only so much of Arsenal's circling of the plughole that can be endured. They will forever be remembered as the team of the 2018 big snow. It feels as if every time you look up at the screen either Mesut Özil or Evelyn Cusack is throwing their eyes up to heaven and wondering what they did to deserve this.
And so the temper starts to fray and the irritation begins to leak out. It’s minus-whatever outside, so you daren’t turn off the heat, but it feels sub-Saharan in here at this stage, so maybe we can do without it for half a bloody hour, and do we really need to have every light in the house on at the same time or would it be absolutely mad to turn the odd one off and who was at my computer and why did they close the window that I had the entries for Cheltenham up on and oh look it doesn’t matter I’m not betting on races that are two weeks away I’m just looking for something to do and sure what would it matter if I was and ah to hell with this I’m going next door to see to can I borrow a shovel.
