It’s an important day today.

600. There have never been so many people on so many trolleys in Irish hospitals. There aren’t even any trolleys left anymore so people sit on chairs with their drips in corridors. Beaumont. Beaumont cancels all surgeries (except for urgent cancer cases) to deal with the overcrowding. What a day. What a day.

It’s Nollaig Bheag, it’s Nollaig na mBan.

It’s the day of the epiphany.

The three wise men, the three kings, must have been dreamboaters. Because they had a dream. Because they recognised when something extraordinary happened. Herod had asked them to tell him on their way back after they had delivered their presents where they had found this new born king so they he too could go there and worship him. The dream had told them to go straight back home and to by-pass Herod. This turned out to have been their wisest move (and remember: these were the three wise men!) because worshipping the new born king was the last thing on Herod’s mind. We all know that he’d had quite different plans. These dreamboaters didn’t cooperate with the king.

It’s also the day, the Pádraig joined us, for the first time!, humming, in rhythm, and with his own voice, a bit out of tune it must be said (there is always hope!), when we played him the song we always play him before we leave in the evening: John Sheehan’s Marino Waltz with the Dubliners. It brings memories of the time Bord na Móna was running a great advertising campaign using this song. They ran it for the first time in 1986. A time we were on blankets and cushions on the floor in front of an open fire, really warm in front, really cold at the back – the fire just didn’t reach there.

We’ll be in the hospital tomorrow for 7am. Appointment for 8am in the outpatient department of the UKE’s TNE-Policlinic where they will check whether it is, in their opinion, safe to try and take out his tracheostomy.

Put a candle in the window. Send Pádraig your energy, friendship, strength. Send the doctors all the wisdom they need to take a decision for Pádraig. Make them believe. Make them, at least for the day, dreamboaters!