UNEXPECTED SUNNY SPELL HAS TRANSFORMED MOOD OF NATION

AN apricot sunrise drenches the city in elated beams of light, the morning a radiant artwork as we point the car westward.

- BY ROY CURTIS

All week, giddy with anticipation and basking sun-drunk in the blinding meteorological miracle May has bestowed upon Ireland, this is how I have imagined the 17th day of the fifth month being midwifed into life.

Bright and flawless and beautiful.

Rolling toward Galway for the Dublin match, heat in the bones, an incandescent Saturday sizzle evaporating any clouds of ill-humour from every face and conversation.

What a glorious and uplifting fortnight it has been, Ireland mistaking itself for a dreamy Mediterranean paradise, the happiness index soaring like a jet plane into azure skies.

The nation's impersonation of some shimmering Shangri-la has been as without blemish as Conor Moore's acidic take-off of Donald Trump, or his note-perfect imitation of Davy Fitz.

It is spellbinding to observe how gorgeous our too-often grey little island appears when dressed in the kind of luminous, cheery costume that has been its uniform during this molten run of weather.

All week, a line from William Wordsworth some of you may recall from school days has been playing on a repeated loop in my head.

'This city now doth like a garment wear, the beauty of morning."

Truly, Earth has not anything to show more fair than the Caribbean-postcard days through which we are living. How magically it transforms the mood music of the everyday.

Even a healthy splash of the most resistant Factor 50 is impotent to prevent the ever more buoyant rays from penetrating the psyche, bronzing the soul with delirium.

CARNIVAL

Ireland is breezing about with a great big smile on its barbecued face. It is as if some meteorological pulley has contorted our features into a thousand-watt perma-grin.

As I write these words at cockcrow on Friday, how it must be in Rio at carnival time.

On Thursday evening I went for a stroll around Dublin. Half the city's population seemed to be drinking or dining al fresco.