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‘Enrika: Sweet as sugar and bright as the sun’ A 1,000-strong congregation burst into spontaneous applause last night after hearing heartfelt tributes to a mother and daughter brutally murdered at the weekend.
‘Parole board let evil rapist prey on Jill’The husband of murdered Jill Meagher says the man who raped and murdered his wife is "unrepentantly evil".
- WORLD
Boy, 13, charged over ‘wrestling’ death of sister, 5 A 13-year-old boy has been charged with second-degree murder over the death of his five-year-old half-sister after he told investigators he repeatedly struck her with wrestling moves imitated from TV.
N Korea ‘will kill Hitler report authors’ North Korea has angrily denied a report its ruler used Adolf Hitler's memoir as a leadership guide, threatening to kill the authors of the report.
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Boss bonuses distort pay averagesThe head of the Irish Bank Officials Association claims that bonuses to senior executives are distorting CSO statistics which indicate rises for financial workers.
Aircraft leasing firm buys 10 Boeing jetsShannon-based aircraft leasing firm GE Capital Aviation Services have bought 10 new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners for an estimated $3bn (€2.24bn) at list price.
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Counties facing funding cuts unless managers’ charter agreedFour counties have been warned they risk having funding withheld if they don't devise a managers' charter.
Wallabies ratchet up the pressureSUDDENLY, Jake White's prediction of doom for the British & Irish Lions should they lose Saturday's first Test against Australia possesses extra foreboding.
- LIFESTYLE
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Limerick eyes Gay GamesThe Treaty City is hoping for a financial bonanza if it lands the 2018 event, writes Jonathan deBurca Butler
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Rain brings out the best and worst
By Damien Enright
RAIN has been unusually reliable this summer.
We are used to mixed weather in June and July, but there’s been little mix in 2012; it’s been almost non-stop precipitation.“Today is a bit-een dry but it’ll be quare again tomorrow...” predicted a local man, looking up at the weak sunlight diffusing through the clouds that have roofed the world in grey for weeks now.
“Quare”, it certainly is. On the south west coast, we’ve had not only the quare rain, but sea fogs as well. When it’s sunny in Dublin, where thousands, trapped in offices and shops, cannot enjoy it, holidaymakers here wander through the grey pall, like ghosts.
Sounds are deadened. Yet, we hear children playing on the beach, and the soft puck of a sliotar as a father and son hurl a ball back and forth in the drizzle. They seem to be enjoying themselves. So also do the kids in wet suits splashing in the surf.
Is bathing in a wet suit really bathing? Every year, I see more and more children are kitted out in neoprene before they take to the water. The aim is to insulate them from the water as much as possible. Old folk say, “In my day, we wore togs and nothing else and divil a bit of harm it did us!” It’s all in the mind, I suppose.
For the outdoor rambler, there are upsides to the rain. Humming songs in one’s head like ‘Singin’ in the rain’ and ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’ will cheer one up. However, the other evening as I passed the pub in the rain and people inside the window turned to look, I couldn’t help but recall a verse from ‘Walking in the rain, and getting soaking wet’ which goes “People come to windows/They always stare at me/Shaking their heads in sorrow/Saying, who can that fool be?” I walked on, regardless. A light soaking never hurt anyone.
After a recent storm, I sat in my work room with the French windows open, listening to the sound of the wind soughing in the beeches across the stream and the sound of the stream in spate rushing wildly down its bed as it hasn’t done for many months, its exuberance and irrepressible progress sweeping it down to the sea.
Water is unstoppable. When it is in flow it rules the roost, as in tsunamis where it lifts and carries away roads and trains and train tracks, and whole towns. Uncontrollable by man or his works, it asserts its domain over his establishments and renders them matchsticks in its triumphant progress.
The rain will never kill one, like the heat or the cold. Except, of course, when downpours create flash floods, as happens during monsoons in worlds far from here. Meanwhile, here, despite the rain, the martins fly and the myrtles bloom.
Our myrtle tree is in glorious flower; myrtles are a feature of west Cork woods and gardens. A native of the Mediterranean, the berries is used in the islands of Sardinia and Corsica — where we have just been — to make an aromatic liqueur. I never tried it; perhaps I should make my own.
Of course there is our native Bog Myrtle too, also known as Sweet Gale; these dwarf trees of wetland are in robust foliage at this time of year. The crushed leaves are good for keeping midges off turf-cutters, or campers in tents. Before hops were grown, bog myrtle was used for flavouring beer and has been commercially developed as an insect repellent and soothing oil.
The martins, of the house martin and sand martin variety, are in full and busy flight morning to night. While the baby sand martins are well hidden inside long tunnels excavated in sand pits, the house martin fledglings can be seen sticking their heads out the nests cemented under eaves. Parents dash back and forth, feeding the individual offspring until it reaches satiation, falls back into the nest to sleep it off and allows space for a sibling to replace it. It’s an ever-open gape as far as the parents are concerned, and they fly from dawn to dark to fill it.
Our heron still visits us most days. A fresh mackerel head is its favourite collation. Little wonder; they are indeed delicious fish! It would never catch mackerel in nature, although they are sometimes driven onto the beach when pursued by porpoises.
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