Colm O'Regan: Who will the Irish be without the endless rain?

'The dashed expectations of summer are in-built into our small talk conversation, our attitude, and our literature'

Pic: Roger Kenny

Two heatwaves in one summer? I just don’t know, there’s "good weather" and there’s "a lot of weather." I know you remember the summer of 1976 and we all got a clatter, and shur it didn’t do us a bit of harm. I only remember back to 1982. But still, forty years is enough data to be going on with and this heat is as heaty as I’ve seen.

I can’t remember a harvest like this. The Combine Man must just have had a list of fields, a list of days, and then divided one by the other. No threat of Atlantic depression, unsettled conditions, scattered showers, or the "tail end of a Caribbean storm" or "will we even be able to get the machines into the field with the mud?" And hay? HAY? With the All Ireland finishing early this year, it’s “the hay saved and everyone bet.”