Retired German bank economist Daniel Holtzschlag is covered in pigeons. While temporarily staying in Dublin, he’s taken to nurturing injured pigeons back to health then returning them to the park. The ones he has helped, he says, remember him.
Currently he has a pigeon on each arm and one on his shoulder that he raised from a chick (“He thinks I’m his father,” he says). All are eating oats from his hands. “They’re wild animals but they trust me. I don’t have pets. I don’t think it’s fair to have a pet. But if they’re injured that’s a different matter. I have a sense of responsibility for them.”
I like Daniel. He has opinions on Ireland’s economy and I’m inclined to trust an economist who looks after injured wildlife.
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He’s just one of many people crammed into the lawns of St Stephen’s Green today. Office workers gaze enviously at the retirees. Everyone walks more slowly. Faces look different. Eyes are covered by sunglasses. Cheeks are less pinched. Mouths are more likely to be smiling. Arms, legs and torsos are on display. Shirtless men push prams. Pale Goths cling to shade. Lycra-wearing women jog. A guitarist is playing light jazz. A nice man at the Guerrilla ice-cream stand gives me a free ice-cream. And toddlers are going nuts. “DUCKY!” screams one as she rushes a seagull.
Martin Gore is rubbing sunscreen in his bald head and offers me some (I take it). His top is off. His friend Declan Kenny is wearing a singlet. Gore is thrilled with the weather. He feels that children should be let off school on days like this. “There’s never good weather!” he says. “Let them off.”
Kenny’s just back from Barcelona. “I was dying to get home to something cooler,” he sighs.
“Irish skin just isn’t able for it,” says Gore. “Now, I’m okay with it, because I’ve a bit of gypsy blood in me.”
“He’s from Ballyfermot,” says Kenny rolling his eyes. They laugh their heads off.
Michael is sitting on a bench staring off into space smiling. “I’m meant to be at a meeting,” he says. “So I’m not giving you my full name.”
What does he think of the sun’s effect on the Irish psyche? “Everybody is cheerful and happy and more relaxed,” he says serenely.
“Except possibly the people you were meant to be meeting?”
“Uh possibly,” he says. He shrugs. “But I like the sun. Working is a pain in the arse.”
Emily Paesler and Tim Williams from Australia came to Dublin for Bloomsday and are struggling with the notion that it’s an unusually hot day.
“This is as hot as it gets here,” I explain.
“Really?” says Emily. “Back home this is normal.”
“This is a news story here,” I say. “It’s probably going on page three. It might be a cover.”
Tim and Emily look at me like I’m mad. “It’s nice because it’s not raining,” says Tim, sounding unconvinced. “But it’s not crazy hot.”
Elsie Cotterill and Sue Khumalo from South Africa are a more inured to the effects of Irish weather. Most days, says Cotterill, “no one talks or smiles that much. Today everyone is friendly.”
“I suppose when you move over here you acclimatise, so we’re kind of used to dreary weather,” says Khumalo. “So when it gets sunny you tend to think it’s a bit too hot.”
Nearby a pale teenager called Richard is lying on his back with his top off. No sunscreen?
“Nah, I’m not a girl. I don’t have to bother with that sort of thing,” he says inaccurately.
“He’d rather be bright red than bright white,” says his friend Laura. “I’m timing him. He’s got 20 minutes on each side. Like a fillet of chicken.”
“It’s not really hot enough to justify going around with your top off, is it?” asks Sarah Crosby, sitting in the shade with her parents, Paul and Margaret, and baby daughter Elisha Larkin.
“I love being out in the sun,” says Margaret. “If not for the baby I would be. I love my rays.”
Paul isn’t a sun worshiper but likes how it “lifts people and makes them forget the country’s economic ills”.
He clearly hasn’t met Paul Bacon, a goateed guitarist, who when asked about the weather responds: “I’d rather discuss the economic situation and the fact we owe so much.”
The sun doesn’t make you forget that? “I forget nothing!” he says defiantly. Then he plays a niftily ramshackle song called The Mars Twang. “Talking to you, are you an alien too? I think you are!” he sings.
Kenneth and Thomas are topless, muscular and tattooed. Their friend Jay is in a windcheater for some reason. “When you wake up and it’s sunny, you think ‘I’m going to have a couple Kopparbergs in Stephen’s Green and if it rains we’ll go under the bandstand,’” he says. “YOLO and all that. The sun makes you drink.”
“You can’t pin that on sun” says Thomas. “No, the sun makes you exhausted and the exhaustion makes you angry.”
Do you wear sunscreen?
“Sunscreen? I came out with loads of baby oil on me today so I did,” says Thomas proudly. “Extra virgin oil. It cooks you like a f***in’ George Foreman so it does.”
What about the Ultra Violet rays?
“That’s what the ozone is for. To protect us from that. The sun gives us vitamin d and nutrients. Why not get the most of it by lathering yourself with extra virgin oil?”
A young woman passes. “Hey, we’re talking to The Irish Times about how Irish women like having good looking men to talk to in the park,” says Thomas.
“Are you coming for a few Kopparbergs?” Jay asks me. They’re clearly living the dream . I make my excuses and leave.
