There’s been quite a lot of response to the 40-Foot Christmas swim pictures, so I thought I’d share this extraordinary video, from the incredible long hot month of July here, our own heat wave.
It’s become a faint memory, indeed seems more like a dream now, that magical month when we lay in the parks watching films at midnight dressed happily in tee-shirts and shorts.
But this beautiful film from that time gives some idea of the heat as it celebrates another Dublin tradition, as a few miles away from the coastal Dublin burgher-classes; back in the city centre, as local kids dive fearlessly off the Liffey quays, off the bridges and even (look out for it) off a giant crane.
The film was produced by a brilliant, talented small team at Motherland (films) In terms of simple, stark beauty and power, it may well have been the best thing in the arts to come out of Dublin in 2013.
If you didn’t see it in late summer here’s another chance, justly a winner of multiple prizes. Unmissable.
Arran Q Henderson 
Wow!
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OK, you’re on your own in this Arran. Your Welsh cousins haven’t taken madness to these extremes ( so far) perhaps because we don’t get heatwaves.
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Ah… I’m sure that’s not true. Sure you get them about as often as we do. Say once every 12-18 years?
This summer here was , I was told, the best since 1976. (!)
God save us all from Celtic weather. Oh well, there are consolations, in culture, people, landscape and all the rest, as you and I both know.
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You know, I have the idea that the heat didn’t change much. Those lads would have been throwing themselves in the canal whatever the weather. Lovely bit of film.
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I agree Jane, on both counts. They do it every summer, even the bad and dreary ones. But this last summer, numbers were definitely up. It was as you may have heard a real, proper, scorcher of a summer, so rare in Ireland, and such a consolation, and relief, to our troubled souls! I’m praying for the same again later in 2014. There is nowhere better when the sun shines.
The film I also agree is lovely. The photography, the sound design, every aspect of it. Came across it when it was released months ago, and found it totally captivating, Nice to have a chance to share good stuff. This blogging business is not so bad sometimes, eh?
Hope all well in France.
-A.
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