Great artwork from Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com
Every Saturday I take my sabbath.
I don’t have to do my stretches.
I don’t have to exercise.
I can eat whatever I want, yet must cook as little as possible.
I go out for my Full Irish on Saturday morning and in the evening I shove something into the microwave.
Yes, a dreaded UPF dinner for me, and that’s okay.
It’s my day off.
Wouldn’t want you to think that makes life simple. Doing exactly what I want is way more complex than simply doing nothing.
The Ireland England ruby match is about to start, and I’ll watch that with full sound and vision until half time, when I have to mute the TV so’s I can listen to the Chelsea commentary on my phone.
All good and eminently doable, until I send a text to my mate JB, saying I’m having a busy lazy rainy day.
This is when being a vocational writer becomes a bit of a pain. My so-called ‘calling’ hears Busy Lazy Rainy Day in capital letters: a working title, very probably a headline for a piece, ‘cos yeh, I’ve been meaning to scribble something new for a while.
Right now though there’s the rugby, which stretches my love and loyalty between my home nation and the nation I call my home. Unless it ends in an honourable tie, part of me will win that game and part of me will lose it.
The Blues playing Burnley doesn’t stretch my loyalty at all.
My writer thing knows there’s no better time than right now to put that thought down.
In fact, if I don’t turn the stream of thought that followed the idea into notes or better, a first draft, any potential will diminish; might be forgotten.
Do it now!
Engrained in my DNA after living off my blather for so long. Do it now!
There’s the rugby, the footie, and the laundry- oh! Didn't I mention that I chose my day off to do the laundry too? There’ll be drum-spinning ear-shattering whining splicing the air in a minute - oh, no, right now in fact.
Just before kick off. Not too bad. I’ll sort those clothes out at half time, before the Chelsea kick off.
And there I am, on my day off, writing mental lists.
To Do lists.
Worse. Unnecessary To Do lists.
Chronological blah blah.
Having laid out my clean clothes on driers I reject the matches, the laundry the whole damn doodad that had me writing mental lists.
I go outside and stand in the rain. Mental behaviours, some might say.
I beg to differ. Busy Lazy Rainy Day. I’ve been busy and lazy and it’s been raining for several centuries now, or so it seems.
Relentless dancing drops hitting my mypex, standing pools of water on drenched clogged ground.
Juicy big wet-making raindrops slick through my hair. I can feel my jeans soaking in the rainspray drenching given by the wind.
Pneumonia beckons. Communing with nature is great and all that, but I like breathing too, so I go inside and watch the drops dance on the pavement.
Rain: saviour of Ireland. Rain that keeps our clifftops free from hotels, our beaches empty and clean, our fields full of flowers and our pasture rich and deep.
Alongside the absolute certainty of rain here on the edge of the mighty Atlantic the only other thing I can guarantee is that every local soul will utter some form of weather assessment thus:
“I don’t mind if it’s cold/hot/windy/foggy/frosty as long as it’s not raining. That’s the thing. Long as it’s not raining.”
After 34 years living on Ireland’s west coast I still cannot fathom why people choose to demonise that which they live with each day.
It’s going to rain, so we might as well enjoy it.
Masters of the meteorological euphemism, the English and Irish have created a universe of weather terms that are indecipherable to foreigners, and let's be honest, pretty much incomprehensible to ourselves.
Any ideas just what an 'odd shower' might be? One in which the rain falls upwards?
Anyone know exactly what they mean by bright? Are we talking clouds, sunshine, or what?
And when did the word 'rain' disappear from forecasts, to be replaced with 'unsettled weather'?
It's not unsettled at all.
It's days and days of rain.
Weeks, nay months of rain rain rain.
Just say it baby; we can handle the truth.
Unsettled, me hole.
We do rain in all shapes and sizes: soft; drizzly; damp; showers - but is that occasional showers, frequent showers, constant showers; heavy showers, or prolonged heavy showers?
We have light, moderate and heavy rain, followed by lashing rain and then, Top of the Rain Pops comes sideways rain, which conspires to come at you on gale and storm force winds from the horizontal.
For reasons I’d rather not understand, sideways rain seems to possess some kind of perverted predilection for travelling up inside a coat or even jeans, as if sniffing out your bits.
Not good.
With the coming of spring there arrive the early enquiries from friends for summer visits, asking the inevitable question: "What's the weather like?"
Let me think: what is the weather like? I’ve lived in hot dry places. I’ve lived where the ground moves under your feet, where forests burn, where the winters blow blizzards and snowdrifts.
I’ll admit to being generally happy living between 10 - 20C, or 50 - 60F in the old money.
We rarely have extreme weather here. When we do it’s mostly rain, and we have an extremely large vocabulary with which to describe it.
My own bȇte noir is when the media forecasters show off their state-of-the-art technology by predicting
“Sunshine at times, rain in places.”
Aaaaarrggghhhhh.
Yes we know.
Times and places.
As opposed to the weather in Black Holes and parallel universes, beyond time and reason.
Maybe, just maybe, one day they’ll share with us which places at what times.
Today To Do lists begone!
I’m watching the rain.
© Charlie Adley
21.02.2026
No comments:
Post a Comment