Storm In A Herbal Teacup

In all fairness, we had a knee-jerk reaction to this morning’s Happy Pear photo too…

With an emphasis on the jerk, rather than the knee.

The Flynnstones gang, heading out for their daily morning swim. With a major storm a-brewin’.

And that’s just it. There was no sign of a storm that early in the morning. A higher-than-normal wind, perhaps, and a few choppy waves, but, actually better than your average deep winter morning down at Greystones seafront. 

Still, with the whole country on red alert about what had only yesterday been classified a hurricane, sure, let’s all shout at these fools for having their traditional morning swim. In relatively calm waters. On a clear morning.

A Guide reader had been kind enough to send us a pic of the lads this morning, and we duly posted it on our Facebook page. With an incredibly witty quip about natural selection.

We should have checked in with the guys themselves. Posting their own picture this morning, the lads pointed out that ‘inspite of the weather warning, it was one of the calmest mornings in a while, so, there was no risk at all in having a swim!’.

And they were right. That didn’t stop others taking that knee-jerk reaction and running with it though.

‘So irresponsible. Putting themselves and our rescue teams at risk. ‘Poor example,’ stated one. ‘Horrendous post, very poof judgement,” said another, whilst a particularly impassioned commentator ominously wrote, ‘People’s mothers, fathers, sister’s, brothers, friends who work in the coastguard etc could have had to risk their lives going out to rescue you this morning despite the numerous warnings given, don’t encourage others to follow you into a potentially dangerous situation, stay safe everyone.’

As much as there may very well be impressionable people out there who, upon being instructed by The Happy Pear to go jump off a cliff, would merrily do so, but, Dave and Steve clearly weren’t offering such advice this morning. And when they hit that freezing cold Irish Sea water this morning, it was no more dangerous than yesterday. Or the day before.

The original Happy Pear morning post is gone, with a quick apology, but, far from teaching us the dangers of regular swimmers swimming in relatively calm water, the whole thing was really more of, when it comes to social media, we all have to learn to really look before we leap to conclusions.