The night of the first fall of snow I was driving up the brow of a hill near home when the car skidded to a halt. It is a back-wheel drive and in snow it’s like an elephant on roller skates. A few smaller cars, older cars and cheaper cars ably veered around and as they did their revs sounded like guffaws of laughter as I cowered in the driver seat feeling like a fool.

“What the hell am I going to do?” Instinctive panic made me reach for my Irish Farmers Journal hi-vis in the belief it might somehow make me look like I was in control of the situation. Then a man and a woman pulled up in a jeep.

“Ah I’m fine,” I replied like a true Irishman to their expressions of concern but in the tone of “please, please help me”. They stopped. The woman knew what she was doing. It was like she had read the manual “what to do when you come across an eejit stuck in the snow”. Mammy-like, she told me to sit in, steer, and leave the rest to her and her husband.

They politely stopped snow tourists out for a novelty walk and who were only too willing to show off their first-aid snow skills also. The collective charity nursed me back down the tiny hill and towards a more sensible flat route home.

As the embarrassment drained from my blushing face, I beeped the horn, waving my hand out the window in deep gratitude, fearful of stopping again to shake hands just in case.

They cheerily shouted back: “Not at all, safe home.” I couldn’t help but notice how satisfying their possibly once-in-a-decade-snow show of kindness seemed to mean to them even if their evening trek through winter wonderland had been briefly interrupted.

At least they now had one snow story to share. I’m sure everybody in Ireland has a Storm Emma yarn to regale in a kind of “where were you when Kennedy was shot” way. Like the way I was able to puff out my chest two weeks ago and reminisce about the big snow of ’82. That’s the only aspect I don’t mind about getting old, I can talk about the olden days with a sense of authority to the whipper snapper colleagues and pups around me who think they know it all!

Anyway, after being pushed back down the slippery slope, I felt this obligation to go outside myself and shovel snow as a sort of penance for the kindness of strangers. Once the red warning was lifted, out I went to clear some slush. And you wouldn’t believe it but didn’t a man get stuck in his back-wheel drive coupe, revving and spinning the wheels furiously as if in hope the car would levitate out of trouble. I chuckled knowingly as I offered help. Here was my chance.

I enthusiastically set about digging, pushing and directing him back and forward, eventually helping him clear. What happened next? Away he slid with neither a beep nor wave. I stood sweating, briefly wondering how a shovel might look sticking out the back window of his Mercedes Benz. CL

Well done Ireland

Congratulations Ireland. Six Nations Champions! But once France beat England to confirm the inevitable, didn’t it feel like a bit of an anticlimax?

At the start there was this prospect of a St Patrick’s Day showdown with England. Instead, Joe Schmidt’s heros wrapped it up a match early in their suits, not their boots. Yes I know, such an attitude sums up the modern-day fair-weather armchair supporter expectation from sport? Still, there is a Grand Slam to be won.