It is easy to become nostalgic about one’s youth. Many of my idyllic childhood holidays (weren’t our summers longer and sunnier?) were spent on day trips crossing two counties to reach the nearest stretch of beach in Lahinch. Seventy five miles away our Simca trundled through wind  battered County Clare landscapes beloved of the  Father Ted TV series. In fact the actual Craggy Island parochial house is located at Glenquin County Clare. On the way home my mother bought fresh lobsters “cheap as chips” from fishermen who had not yet discovered the fish markets of Dublin and Paris.