By Cormac MacConnell

SUMMER rushes headlong towards its peak in the West, this pell mellery of a period where long days and short nights create a surreality of sunshine and showers and stars, a suspension of the harder edges of living.

I’m passing through the normally dour town of Gort on the border between Galway and Clare and incredibly there is a South American carnival in full swing. You never saw so many smiling teeth, so many exotically sultry women, so loud a brass beat, barbecues smoking on the town square.

About 20% of the current population of Gort are now Brazilians, working mainly in meat plants on the outskirts and, on this weekend, they let their hair down and organized a festival, and Brazilians from all over this new Ireland traveled to join them. The town blazed with color, with life, with celebration.

Beside the main barbecue I saw two small dusky boys with beautiful smiles pasted to their faces, their eyes a mile wide with excitement, hot dogs in their hands, heels drumming against the wall to the beat of a hot samba. Summer Ireland 2006!

Next day in the Examiner, from Dublin’s parish of Donnycarney, sitting closely together on a stone step, two pale-faced fair-haired little boys, about exactly the same age, wearing their Sunday best of a Friday, eyes again wide with excitement, photographed by a good snapsman as they watched all the excitement of Granda being buried.

Their Granda was Charlie Haughey, gone at 80 at last after a decade of disgrace, still getting a state funeral with all the trappings. Soldiers tended his casket, the Tricolor draped it, there was live TV and radio coverage for the nation that he dominated for so long.

His priest brother Eoin sheds tears and calls him Cathal from the pulpit. The high and mighty are all there.

But, in summer Ireland 2006, the plain people of Ireland are not. The state had erected crash barriers and huge outdoor TV screens for the expected thousands who would not be able to get near the last chapel of Charlie.

The thousands stayed away. In the end the police removed the barriers so that the relatively few hundreds of Dubliners who went to the funeral could get through.

Charismatic Charlie always failed to get a clear majority for Fianna Fail in the elections he fought. There was no clear majority at his funeral either. That was kinda sad.

Away down in his beloved Dingle, though, at exactly the same time as the state funeral’s Mass, the fishermen from Dingle and his many friends there crammed into their chapel benches to say their farewell from the heart of the Kingdom.

And just a little shower of rain put tears in the eyes of the life-size bronze statue they erected in honor of the Boss only a couple of years ago, long after he had been publicly disgraced in the Dublin tribunals. The Kerrymen never forget their friends and maybe prefer them to have a couple of faults too.

I’m sure one of his little grandsons is called Conor. They were not named in the photograph. But it’s a family name.

And there’s another index to this summer of 2006. There is news today of the most popular Christian names of tomorrow’s Irishmen and Irishwomen.

Thirty years ago, even 200, the Catholic template created thousands of Patricks and Padraigs and Paurics, by far the most popular name for boys for obvious reasons. Equally so for the Marys in their tens of thousands, the Bridgets, the Kates and Siobhans.

It’s not that way any more. The stats show that the most popular name for boys now is Jack. The most popular name for their sisters is Emma.

Sean, intriguingly (Charlie has a son called Sean), remains the most popular name for boys in Dublin and in Connacht while Conor (another Haughey) is the most popular name in the border region. Riddle me that one!

And replacing the Paurics and Marys, apart from Jack and Emma, we now have a bright new legion of Alicias, Isabellas, Heathers, Isobellas and even Zaras. Their brothers are likely to be called Joshua or Dylan, Kyle or Callum.

Callum is the highest new entry and that is maybe connected with the recent death of Georgie Best, whose son was christened Callum. And there is Dean and Brandon and Nathan on the popular list of boys’ names too, this summer 2006, and the highest new entry on the girls’ list is Ruby. Charles and Charlie have gone out of fashion.

Media vox pops, incidentally, showed that a lot of twenty-somethings around Dublin knew absolutely nothing at all about Charlie Haughey. Tempus does indeed fugit at great velocity nowadays.

Meanwhile, as always this time of year, but especially this summer, sport becomes so huge both nationally and internationally that life is beaten into second place by a short head. There would have been more conversation about the World Cup in Ireland then there was about Charlie’s passing.

But some things do not change. We are still united, the vast majority of us, in waiting for the English to be beaten, and the view is that their pampered superstars will not get much further.

I saw today that a horse which won a good race at Leopardstown yesterday will now be aimed “at Galway,” which underlines the high summer peak of the Galway Races. It’s all happening here now in summer Ireland 2006.