"I don't tend to be wired particularly well for extended periods of time at home and away from work," says Damien O'Meara, who welcomes the green shoots of sport returning.
"In a decade of marriage and nearly a decade together before that the most common annoyance I’ve inflicted upon my wife is to ponder what we’re going to do to fill whatever time off we might have, days identified in advance on family holidays for water park excursions, trips to nearly markets, theme parks and much more.
"Even when we have two weeks in Portugal with nothing to do, I tend to need to find some form of routine or plan to fall into line with. It might not come as too much of a surprise that bouncing from week to week with little solid obligation in the diary has required somewhat of a mental readjustment.
"The O’Mearas of Northside Dublin are a four-piece. My wife is a secondary school teacher who has been kept busy between co-ordinating work online for her classes and most recently preparing for the new world of calculated exam grades.
"My daughter Emily is eight, four-year-old Adam is the baby of the clan. We’ve tried, as far as is possible, to maintain some form of structure. Have you even been living through the past few weeks if you’ve not been poised at 9am various mornings preparing to curse Joe Wicks for demonstrating to your children how unfit or immobile you are?
"My daughter’s school has been very consistent in sending some work home for them to do which kills an hour or so every morning. Adam’s Montessori have Zoom twice a week despite his strong held belief that his 'computer friends’ are now the same as his ‘real friends’.
"The kids were given a set of children’s encyclopedias last year which have become the surprise package of interest for Emily in recent weeks. Guess the idiot father who bet his daughter she couldn’t ace a quiz on King Tutankhamun and was hit in the pocket for her takeaway of choice as a forfeit?
"What’s worse is that she made the executive decision that she should proceed chapter by chapter through the book on a weekly basis - cue a series of bemused Zoom calls with family members where they are suddenly hit with the news that Aristotle established the Lyceum school or that there’s a very good reason why the National Geographic picture editors may have cropped the picture of Michelangelo’s David from the waist up.
"Aside from that, we are slowly and intermittently working our way through Disney’s back catalogue, the Marvel cinema universe while the girls have embraced dance routines uploaded on YouTube by an American choreographer Joseph Corrella (567 Broadway).
"While they dance, Adam and I focus on Lego for fear that we would be dragged into a chorus line. We’re blessed that St Anne’s Park and Dollymount beach are both within close reach of the house. The kids have probably spent more time in each over the past few weeks that they had in their time on the planet in advance of that.
"Away from what on-air work that comes my way, day to day I’m a staff radio producer. Aside from the occasional flirtation with an election count over my time in RTÉ, all my broadcasting and production work, has been in sport.
"The lack of live action, while frustrating, has presented several of us in the department with the opportunity to be redeployed elsewhere. I recently finished up a three-week run with Radio 1’s arts and culture show, Arena which provided a very rewarding challenge in adapting to how other departments work differently from sport.
"It also provided the chance to work professionally with friends around the Radio Centre with whom I may not have had the chance to interact with professionally much over the years. With the green shoots of sporting recovery starting to look like they may be about to burst through the barren ground, the focus is increasingly back on sport and its return to the airwaves.
"I made a radio documentary on Shane Lowry’s success at last year’s Open Championship with my colleague Greg Allen which originally went out on Radio 1 before Christmas. Like most of my colleagues I’ve got a list both mental and physical of programmes, podcasts, book projects that I’d like to get stuck into at some stage. I’ve found myself pottering away sticking notes of various kinds into my phone of what I might try to get up and going next. Whether any will ever see the light of day is the sixty-four-million dollar question.
"I tend to be a voracious reader, but have found my ability to sit down and enjoy a book really hampered in this new reality. I like to have both a fiction and non-fiction book on the go simultaneously. While it’s not everyone’s cup of tea I read, almost exclusively now, via an app on my tablet.
"I fully embrace the argument that nothing beats having a book in your hand. However, when you’re on the road a lot and have a few hours to kill in empty stadia or an airport, or are seeking a few minutes solitude in a service station I find it easier to have a device with the potential for multiple reads on hand rather than try to squeeze a book into an already overloaded flight case of broadcasting equipment.
"I just finished Don Winslow’s collection of short stories Broken, I’m closing in on the latter stages of James Montague’s examination of the place of the Ultra in soccer. I’ve done neither a service with the length of time it’s taken me to navigate them. I had great ambitions of getting stuck into a couple of hefty historical tomes over the course of the summer but I may need to reassess my mental boundaries at the moment."
