Murphy’s Law as weather changes
Having just arrived from Ireland — or, more specifically from coastal west Cork — it was the first sun we’d seen for many a week and we joined them in the raspberry beer, if not the striptease.
Meanwhile, cyclists of all ages, from nine to 90, whizzed past on the narrow riverside path, that section of which is known to my son and friends as Death Alley. The Czechs are as big on cycling as the Dutch, and some of the riders looked as if they’d been at it since long before I was born.
My grandson took to riding his tricycle amongst them and we had a few heart-stopping moments until we persuaded him to cross the bridge to the park on the other side. The town is replete with parks and every kind of tree imaginable.
It was wonderful to be in the sun after such an abominable Irish summer — and after the recent frustration of watching TV news programmes where the sun shone on presidential contenders, worthy or not, in Dublin, while in our ‘neck of the woods’, the sky above came down to meet the trees.
However, barely had we settled down to enjoy the change when an Englishman in the company announced that winter would begin the following morning — his telephone had told him so. After six weeks of cloudless skies and temperatures in the low twenties, henceforth there would be rain, and shortly afterwards, snow.
Golden to grey overnight: such are the weather patterns in central Europe, where the seasons change abruptly. We had experienced a similar transformation when we’d visited Czech earlier in the year. Winter turned to spring almost overnight, the clouds dispersed, the last pockets of snow melted, the sky turned blue and the trees green. Now, after weeks of drought, had we precipitated the change? It seemed like Murphy’s Law, certainly, the weather perfect until the Irish arrived, bringing Murphy-land weather with them. Next morning, sure enough, it rained, the temperature dropped to eleven degrees and snow fell on the mountains to the south, near the Austrian border. For four days in a row, we saw not a glimpse of the sun, a chill east wind blew down the deep, street canyons, and the world assumed the dead grey tones of a Russsian winter.
The town, too, transformed. On the main square, workmen dismantled the summer terraces, where only a few days before — and, we were constantly reminded, for six weeks previous to that — crowds had sat savouring their Pilsner in the sunshine. Central Europe was retreating indoors. Now, we appreciated the triple-purpose of the arched collonades beneath the buildings on all sides of the square. While in Spain, such collonades simply protect the citizens from the sun, here they also offered shade in summer and shelter from rain and snow in winter too. We went to the country to pick mushroom, and there was some golden light toward evening, with the trees in glorious autumn colours reflected in the still lakes. Here, we came upon a piebald hare, its upper body already in winter dress — pure white — while its big back legs were still brown, matching the oak leaves littering the forest floor.
We found mushrooms, Boletus of various kinds, which we sliced and dried to bring home. However, walking in the Czech woods at this time of the year could be hazardous, with acorns twice the size of those in Ireland falling from the trees. When I parked the car and climbed out, one landed on the bonnet with a sound like a rifle-shot; for a moment, I thought we might have trespassed and become the target of an irate game-keeper. But then, as we walked by a lake, the regular loud plops of acorns dropping into the water alerted us to the cause.
As I write this, the morning is suddenly bright and the weather is glorious; clearly, it isn’t true that there won’t be a single sunny day until next spring. However, unfortunately, we are due to fly home tomorrow. Murphy’s Law strikes again.
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