LET’S put the news on, says Tony, and we all look at him as if he’s gone mad. What’s news? we ask. What’s a telly? pipes a small and silly voice at the back (me).

That’s the way it is in Eire at Christmas. It’s eating and drinking, the telling of tall stories, the reading of books you got as presents, a bit of singing and the kids with their party pieces on flute and oboe.

It’s the way Christmases were in England when I was a child and there’s something painfully nostalgic about it.

Trish, a former air hostess, does her mickey-take of the Ryanair stewards’ pep-talk (‘In the unlikely event that the plane should land in water, emergency shutes will deploy at the exits at the front, rear and centre of the plane. Please have your two Euro piece ready ...’ )

Then there’s games, party tricks and creac, endless creac, of things past mostly, but of the present and now the uncertain future.

Bonna weighs in with the tale of the carpenter who was fitting a door and got ribbed because he thought the cat-flap was a window and put the door on upside down. ‘Don’t worry, Finbar,’ we told him. ‘We’ll run a plank up either side of the door so the cat can get in and out.’

Then there were the old boys a few days ago who dragged an armchair out on to a nearby frozen lake, weighted fishing rods so they bent double, and sat there pretending to be fishing while a third man took pictures and sent them to their friends.

‘We were up on the lake fishing and I swear it was a whale we hooked. They come up there when the weather’s bad in the bay.’

‘What kind of pizza does Santa like?’ asks Tony when we’ve laughed him out of court for wanting the news on. ‘Deep pan, crisp and even,’ he says.

Down in the valley a church is broadcasting handbell carols and houses right across the Sugarloaf Mountain have fairy lights that glitter in the cold air.

We open another bottle of wine and turn what remains of the turkey into sandwiches for the ferry and plane home.