Ireland’s four seasons in 60 minutes

AS I set out, intent upon a 40-minute hike to shake the cobwebs off and reduce the corporation, the day seemed set fair – but then, to use, oppositely, the words of Dylan Thomas’s Poem in October, “The weather turned around/ It turned away from the blithe country ...” and the sky was sudden stained as blue as a bruised damson when a squall swept in off the sea.

Bad timing, thought I, and withdrew indoors just before the heavens bucketed down, the surface of the yard was suddenly hopping with raindrops and I couldn’t see the horses, let alone the bunny rabbits, in the field opposite for the density of the deluge from the sky.

Five minutes later, I looked out again to see a changed world. The shower had passed, and the vista from the window was sparkling. I set off up the bay.

The fields across the channel were as bright as if the grass had spouted out of the ground minutes before: pastel perfect, they might have been freshly painted by some giant brush. The mudflats shone like buffed gunmetal. It was a miracle, the way the light had changed everything with the emergence of the sun.

We have been having gorgeous autumnal weather with dramatic colours in the woods, but now all outdoors was dramatic. The redshanks’ red legs shone as if varnished, the greenshanks’ breast looked pristine white.

Nearby, a couple of hundred lapwing stood facing into the fresh wind, their topknots flying and iridescent feathers catching the sun. Over the bridge beside the old abbey at Timoleague, gulls hung in the sky, riding the blast, white against the turquoise blue.

It’s amazing, the weather in Ireland. In the blink of an eye, it changes from foul to fair, and fair to foul. Would that our economy could reverse itself so quickly!

Our financial vista changed almost as quickly as do our blue, untroubled skies when storm clouds sweep in off the Atlantic.

But the fiscal clouds that now drench us in gloom didn’t all emanate from across the Atlantic; they were seeded at home when our leaders vaporised our assets in cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces which turned out to be no more substantial than fairground castles.

But, enough of doom-struck metaphor! While our financial climate is locked in a nuclear winter, in the natural world we can enjoy all seasons in the space of an hour. As I walked, a rainbow materialised and spanned the bay, its bands of colour as distinct as a football supporter’s scarf.

The lichens on the ancient walls of Timoleague Abbey glowed rust-red in the light and, on the waterside, I found green lichens wrapped like lagging on a water- pipe around a silver birch.

Later, I heard a newscast to the effect that the majority of the fisheries ministers of the EU states had rejected the Fishery Commissioner’s proposal for a 50% reduction in catches of bluefin tuna, presently 13,500 tonnes a year. Greenpeace and other watchdog groups insist that continuation of the present quotas will lead to bluefin stocks falling to unsustainable levels in the next decade.

They back their contention with science and I am inclined to believe them. Tuna, like cod, will be over-fished beyond recovery. We will have wiped out another valuable and sustainable food source in a world where billions regularly starve.

The Mediterranean nations were most vocal in opposing the reductions. Britain alone supported the commissioner’s proposals, with Sweden and Germany sitting on the fence. I can find no record of Ireland voicing an opinion. I hope we support the reductions.

During my stroll, I was struck by the silliness of making the removal of sea lettuce from the foreshore illegal when the bay edges are coated in the stuff.

However, on the adjoining roads, recently flooded by high tides, it can be collected from the verges where it lies, washed up in large, brown mats, many of them now completely dry and perfect for collecting. Spread on the garden, they will make powerful organic fertiliser and should not be wasted, of course.