Nation gripped with anticipation for return of those we hold closest

At their core.

- 

An empty seat at the table. A black hole in life.No matter the advances in technology, you still can't hug somebody on Facetime. There is no Zoom call that allows you to feel the heart that is an extension of your own beat beneath a child's ribcage.

It is why Christmas reunions - with family or close friends - are freighted with so much emotion.

As the author Gail Lumet Buckley wrote: "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future."

Today, as we have done for 20 Decembers now, a group of lifelong friends will ramble around a few Dublin pubs and raise a glass to the first of our group to fall, all of two decades hence.

If we were cars, we might be classed as vintage. Certainly, many of our wheezing engines would struggle mightily to pass the NCT.