Terry Prone: Weather opportunism appears to be a distinctly modern Irish trait
People enjoy the sunny weather at Sandycove in Dublin during the good spell of weather on Friday. Photo: Sam Boal/Collins Photos
Apart from the black eye and the inflamed roof of my mouth, this last would have been the perfect week, partly because of the weather and partly because Donald Trump chose to prove Fergus Finlay right.
The weather was the wonderful factor, although I am conscious that by the time you read this, we may, in meteorological terms, have gone the way international markets went on Trump.
But while we had it, it was marvelous. People complain constantly about Met Éireann as if they invented the weather each week, but they never send letters to them to say: “Well done with the sunshine and reducing the wind chill factor.”
The lack of appreciation is probably due to weather-opportunism, a distinctively Irish trait that flings us on beaches in huge numbers the minute we see a tiny flicker of sunshine.
That opportunism rubbishes all those old bits of advice like “ne’er cast a clout till May be out”, which seems to have been treated as gospel going back to Neanderthal times and stopping then only because gospels don’t go that far and also Neanderthals as far as we can tell weren’t much into clouts.
One of the truly great things about modern Ireland is that we’ve chucked the old weather rules; we cast a clout the minute we can.
We ignore all that guff about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb.
Indeed, many of us can’t even remember if it was March that behaved like a petting zoo or some other month.
It isn’t just that we’ve chucked the old rules. It’s that we know (as our grandparents did not) that even freezing water doesn’t give you a cold, so we’re prepared, not just to fling ourselves in the sea at no provocation, but to buy barrel things in German discounters in order to freeze the asses off ourselves in our own back garden.
Plus, the national mood goes up at least 20 points. Once even a minor heatwave is on the way, we start admiring where we live as if we’ve never noticed it before.
This can lead to embarrassing moments, like someone in our office (OK, me) speculating aloud that the gnarly old tree directly outside our offices was probably there since before 1916.
For all I know it was there before the Famine, but everybody looked at me as if I needed help and it was difficult to explain that, bathed in sunshine, Dublin is a marvel to behold and to explore.
Every taxi driver in Cork maintains that the same is true there.
Pass a park in the city during good weather and it’s all ‘Dejeuner sur l’herbe’ with maybe less nudity. But not that much less.
Pass along the canal in Dublin and the variety of street food on offer is unbelievable.
As is the jay-walking. My theory is that once you have your styrofoam container of food bought and paid for, you become filled with the conviction that because everybody’s in better humour than usual, no driver is going to mow you down when you ignore the rules about walking directly in front of them.
The markets helped, this last week, too. It’s unclear if the Tánaiste fulfils the definition of a lucky general, but he was pretty damn lucky last week when the Trump climbdown happened around the same time as he began chatting up the US president’s closest fiscal underlings.
To come out beaming and sharing soundbites was way better than Simon Harris could have hoped for.
I wouldn’t have wanted the tariffs to continue at the skyscraper level they were at before the bond market got morning sickness, but when commentators started talking about Asians not liking to lose face, I was thinking that the rule applies in Ireland, too.
Fergus Finlay had sent me a severe email after this column last week, telling me I was wrong about Trump having changed and that Trump 2.0 was less likely to veer all over the place on decisions than Trump 1.0 had been.
And — just as I was going “nah” — Trump did his 90-day veer, proving Fergus Finlay right.
I could have coped with that if it wasn’t for the black eye and the inflammation. The black eye was indirectly consequent on agreeing that my garden could be used for an Easter egg hunt.
The organisers would provide food and supervise, so it was an easy decision for me to make. So easy that before they arrived, I began to feel guilty.
I could at last offer them ice-cream, I thought, and went looking for cones.
Now, here’s a fact I should not share with readers. You know the way the EU is telling us to put by a few cans of life-sustaining protein foods so that, in the event of an emergency, we won’t immediately starve? I’ve always gone the other way.
I may not have chickpeas, but if you are overcome by a sudden need for chocolate, spare Easter eggs, marshmallows for toasting, pancakes or syrup, I’m your woman. Empty calorie HQ, I run.
So I figured I had cones somewhere, and got up on a step ladder to ascertain where. It was at that point that a pink box of them fell on me and knocked me off the ladder, to the surprise of the cat.
Now the cat is in no position to reproach me because age is catching up with her, too. She keeps deciding to jump onto the kitchen island and failing to make it.
Having checked for personal breakage, I forgot about the box of waffle cones hitting me until the make-up artist on the asked me why I had a black eye.
She painted me with concealer and to be honest, I didn’t care because of the inflammation.
For four days, the roof of my mouth felt as if someone had taken a blowtorch to it. Now, this will happen if you eat three packages of ridged potato crisps in a row, trust me on this.
But trust me also when I tell you I have not done this in years. Nothing had passed my lips that would justify the blowtorch sensation.
Trust me also that it’s a hell of a lot easier to examine the onward recovery process of a black eye than the onward progress of the roof of your mouth.
Eventually, Dr Google told me that hayfever can cause this.
Amused to find that the old treatment for mouth ulcers — a gel called Bonjela — is still the treatment of choice, I managed to survive four days without hot coffee.
Iced coffee always has its merits. And in weather like we had last week, it had nothing but merits.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
