Hey. My little numpties.

I’ve been back and forth to London lately…  where walking barefoot around Knightsbridge, speaking Portuguese and being intimate with a man just to prove to yourself that you’re really straight are so ‘tomorrow’ (which, for your information, isn’t a good thing because ‘tomorrow’ is this season’s ‘five minutes ago’) (and, yes, I am aware that Shoreditch is the new Knightsbridge).

Ohh, London. All I can say is, thanks be to the lord Jesus that that roof closed over Centre Court the other week. It was one of those nation defining events: the tension was tense, the palpitations palpable as the BBC commentary team made occasional references to tennis in between shots of: The Roof. Honestly. London would not have been the place for this type of Irishman to have found himself if The Roof thing hadn’t gone off without some kind of drama (as it added another icon to London’s iconography). It was a bit like, you know when you coincidentally happen to be in England on the day their soccer team have been beaten by Moldova in a crucial World Cup qualifier and, even though smirking is the furthest thing from your mind, you’re terrified that you won’t be able to fight back an unwanted facial twitch as you stroll through Heathrow immigration because even the very remotest possibility of a smirky attitute will have you – on production of your passport - dragged off to the side and engaged in the following:

‘So, how long will you be staying in London, sah?’

‘About an hour. I’ve a connecting flight to Tokyo.’

‘And do you have an address in London where you can be reached during your stay?’

Meanwhile, the other day I had a deep thought. Do you know this famous map

which shows the distribution of medieval tower houses around Ireland? And do you know the way no one has so far come up with a really convincing argument as to why the distribution of these magnificent structures should have taken on such a pattern? Well, how about this: aren’t the tower houses everywhere where people play hurling?

What do you think, eh? Am I on to something here?