Christmas came early to our house.

We set out at 1.45 am last Sunday morning. The Ryanair flight to Milan was scheduled to leave at 6.25am. The Express Red Long Term car park booking at Dublin Airport would kick in from 4am. The four-day reservation there would comfortably extend beyond our return, set for 11am on Thursday.

WhatsApp, texting and modern communications systems are so wonderful.

Never mind the pain contained in the Richard Jones song ‘Kilkenny Ireland’ about emigration in the 1850s. A century later, separation from the familiar, as captured in Colm Toibin’s novel, Brooklyn, was still an issue.

But technology has softened that.

Because of it, the world really is a global village now.

During the summer I used one of our regular cyber links to promise my son on the other side of the Atlantic that one day we would go to a famous football eating house in Turin.

The sports commentator, George Hamilton, had introduced me to it in April 1999. It happened on the night that Manchester United beat Juventus 3-2 to qualify for the Champions League final.

The Urbani restaurant on Via Saluzzo was the ideal place to reflect on the epic contest we had witnessed at the Stadio delle Alpi.

It was like a scene from a movie. You kept expecting Gigi Riva or Michael Corleone to turn up. The noise was a constant and the courses kept coming well beyond midnight.

Late last week my son announced that the promised visit to the Urbani restaurant was on.

He had put all the arrangements in place. A small hotel in Milan, close to the main railway station, would be our base. The tickets for three matches were organised: Milan v Napoli on the Sunday night: Juventus v Cagliari on Tuesday, a journey to Turin that could facilitate a visit to the Urbani restaurant. And back to the San Siro on Wednesday evening to see Inter Milan tackle Torino before the Thursday return flight home.

Late on Saturday afternoon, after completing a negative antigen test at a local pharmacy, I met George Mullan on Sligo’s Stephen Street, with his wife, Jo. In a past life our fathers were cattle dealer pals. George makes a living installing top quality football pitches – full grass and hybrid versions – all over the world.

George was a main pitch contractor for the World Cup venues in Russia. His company installed facilities for next year’s World Cup in Qatar. Last month he was in Mexico, sussing out the Aztec Stadium, one of the venues for World Cup 2026, hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States.

When I told him of the planned trip to Milan, George got his retaliation in first.

“I know you will be come back telling me the San Siro pitch is in worse condition that the Showgrounds. Two Serie A teams are playing on it constantly. I’m due over in January to discuss plans for a refit.”

*****

After wake-me-up showers to cover the not-going-to bed factor, we slipped out of the house in the darkness, with a suitcase in one hand and a paper cup of coffee in the other.

Before the junction near Ballisodare the conversation had started. For the first few sentences the engagement was tentative. Because there was no set-in-stone conclusion, the interactions flowed.

The unwelcome enemy had arrived over the hill, just weeks ago, with warning, after the gift planning had been executed.

Unease began with the ominous patterns of information coming from not just South Africa but the Netherlands, France and the UK.

There was the unfortunate back story of Northern Italy where the health system had almost collapsed two years before and where army trucks were required when hearses weren’t able to cope.

Crossing the Curlews, now forty kilometres closer to Dublin Airport, our conversation continued.

Many of the fans at the three matches would be under 35s, a vulnerable cohort, who, even if double-jabbed, would be unlikely to have the booster dose, required to give them extra protection.

We had our extra strong masks and we would be careful. But we would be using airports, sitting on planes and travelling on public transport.

One of us had a booster dose but had some health issues.

The other was young and healthy but hadn’t received the third jab.

Fresh antigen tests would be needed to allow a return from Italy. If either came up positive, there would be a mandatory isolation period in a hotel or somewhere else. And displacement from loved ones in Ireland at Christmas.

And there was the beyond-the-personal factor of governments, health services, societies, communities, individuals committing their energies, in a modern-day version of warfare, to combat an enemy, able to reinvigorate itself when the battle seems over.

At a roundabout near Rooskey, the car turned itself and headed back the road towards Sligo.

*****

It was now 3am on a December Sunday but it seemed the perfect time to segue from an abandoned journey to less-travelled roads.

First stop, Drumsna, with the whole of the town silent and where a Northern Ireland-registered camper van, with frost mist on the windows, was parked across the road from the Shannon that never sleeps.

Then to another now bypassed landmark from childhood, the village of Jamestown, with the distinctive stone pillars in the main street.

Immediately beyond Carrick-on-Shannon we took a left towards the village of Drumlion, where a day before a friend had been laid to rest after a long, spirited life.

Neighbours, all of them wearing masks, had filed into the church for the requiem mass with access to every second seat blocked off. The celebrant priest serves communities in three different parishes. He washed his hands methodically before he prepared to hand out communion.

Dozens of mourners, including several young children, followed the hearse in well-spaced lines the short distance to the cemetery. A number of local men helped the grieving son to carry the coffin and to then lower it into the grave.

The Collooney roundabout offered one final detour, towards Tubbercurry. At Achonry creamery, a right turn for Mullinabreena parish church and five minutes beyond it, Court Abbey graveyard.

Almost sixty years before my father made the same journey with me in the passenger seat. That was a Christmas Eve night, he was still grieving his own father, who died suddenly from a heart attack in January 1963 when over in Glasgow to sell cattle.

As a young boy that night, I was frightened by the notion of going inside a cemetery in the darkness. My father calmed me, saying it was fine for me to stay in the warm van and that we have nothing to fear from the dead. He then went for a few minutes to visit the final resting place of his parents.

It was five am. Instead of being in a Dublin Airport carpark, heading for Milan, we were parked outside a south Sligo cemetery, rooting around in the car for a torch to supplement the iPhone light.

We found the grave where my father had prayed for his parents. We used to torch to inspect the adjoining headstones, with names that confirmed a family line of more than three hundred years.

Before leaving Court Abbey, we paused at the grave of a cousin, who lost his life in the Twin Towers. A Christmas wreath has already been left there.

*****

On Monday, with commendable speed, the voucher came from the Hotel Berlina, Milan, taking account of the travel affected by the Covid alert. Ryanair may offer some gesture towards the unused Thursday flights. The match tickets morphed into empty seats.

But at an infinitely more important level, the sentiment behind the gesture has been banked and will never be forgotten.

It’s a ground rule of existence that death is never far away. Trouble has a habit of intervening when all seems to be going swimmingly. We strive to go about our business not cowed by that reality but conscious of it.

The pandemic is a new iteration of intimidation and threat. It is stubborn and belligerent. As 2021 draws to a close, it seeks to open up a new front.

The contest is wearing on the spirit.

But in the oppressive cycle of challenge, there is the antidote of everyday examples of kindness.

And the hope provided by younger generations. While buffeted by an unfair quota of burden, they seem better than we were at identifying and trusting what matters.