Park

What exactly is a headache? I have assumed the recovery position on the grass at Dublin Castle, where I intend to kill an hour before the infrequent Sunday bus arrives. I am nursing a remarkable hangover.

Every couple of minutes I turn over onto my other side. A blissful ten seconds follows each rotation when my head forgets it’s supposed to be hurting. The ache invariably resurges, though, and begins its slow descent towards the brain-half nearest the ground. As if the pain were a shot of something nasty seeping through my membranes, beholden to gravity and inflaming everything it touches.

Kids are playing a form of live-action Pac-man chasing on the paved patterns running through the grass. They’re keeping me awake, but it’s hard to be annoyed at kids in a park. Every child that comes here plays this game, no matter what nationality. The grass is lava, the grass is shark-infested water, etc. Don’t fall in. I wonder if the architect pictured this going on, day after day. If it even occurred to him.

The kids play with that serious, intense aura that children often assume for games. No laughing. Brief bursts of arguing. When adults remember their childhood they overlay past-times with a joviality that often wasn’t there. The young are driven in their approach; there is no sense of perspective. The stakes are high. And whatever idiot designed this playground obviously had no idea how to build a fair chasing maze.