My usual morning routine would take me down Thorncastle Street onto Cambridge Road and finally onto Pidgeon House Road. However, of late with the bright mornings and summer weather I have been taking the scenic route through Ringsend Park.

The park is a revelation at 8 o’clock morning time. Peace, tranquillity, serenity, harmony, calm, in fact the whole blinking lot wrapped together. You could even use the euphemism ‘laid back’ if you fancy.

The doggie people are an early morning lot and they have a wide variety of mutts in tow. You will see a black labrador having his early morning sniff and a boxer straining at his leash.

There’s another four-legged yoke that resembles a big ball of red fluff and I can’t figure out its pedigree. Anyway, this ball of fluff loves rolling and stretching in the grass and showing off.

Some of the dog owners are in a hurry to get home as they have to go to work or college or whatever. Others just potter along, take in the scenery and for them, ‘time’ is of no consequence.

The Council has introduced ‘pooper scoopers’ and the majority of dog owners tidy up when their mutt has done its business. Unfortunately, there are still some poops left on the poop deck. (That last bit is for the maritime heads.)

The Park has an abundance of magpies and a dearth of sparrows and I wonder are the maggers responsible. Not being a bird watcher or an ornithologist I’m not sure what the answer is.

If you walk to the Cambridge Avenue area of the park you will see wood pigeons and linnets sometimes visit from Irishtown Nature Park. I wonder has Derek Mooney of ‘Mooney Goes Wild’ been to Ringsend Park recently. It’s a virtual aviary.

That’s the good news part of this story. Unfortunately and sadly, I have to tell you of the downside. Among the labradors, the boxers, the fluffy ball, linnets, magpies and wood pigeons, we have the ‘cans’, the lager cans to be precise. There seems to be an outdoor hooley two or three nights a week in Ringsend Park.

Morning strollers are confronted by lager cans strewn on the grass. And sometimes you will see lager bottles smashed to pieces on the pavement. Each morning after the lager party (these are definitely not cider parties, lager is the preferred tipple) the groundsmen have to tidy up the mess.

I am tempted to suggest that this behaviour is the work of ‘birdbrains’, but this would only be an insult to the magpies, linnets and wood pigeons.

Pictured on left is James May from Irishtown with his Greyhound Jack. Jack’s father won the English Derby and James takes him walking in Ringsend Park regularly.