Psst! Shhh! Say nothing to no one. This is between ourselves. We indomitable Irishry must stop complaining about the weather. Okay, some of us might as well be advised to stop breathing. That’s true. In all of my 21 long years ... okay, 29 years ... Well, add a few decades ... Maybe more than a few, but stop quibbling! I’ll take that one again.
In all my many long years on this Earth, I cannot remember a time when Irish people – yes, myself included – did not complain about the weather. And that is understandable too, when you consider we inhabit this small island facing west into more than 3,000 miles of the broad Atlantic.
I mean, even the weather apps can’t get it right a lot of the time. So, unpredictability is the name of the game where our weather is concerned, the only certainty being uncertainty.
But even the very worst wet day in Ireland is preferable to what is now becoming the summer norm in much of Europe every year, with temperatures hitting into the late 30s, early 40 degrees in June, July and August, particularly in the Mediterranean countries.
It’s similar in the US, just add humidity. I remember student summers in New York during July and August as a sweaty hell, day and night. One year we had no air conditioning and, so, couldn’t sleep at night. We got this enormous fan for the night-time. It made so much noise we couldn’t sleep then either!
If such heat is hell, just add humidity for pure torture.
The gift that really is our climate was brought home to me recently when a friend explained how her two Italian guests just loved the “miserable” Irish summer weather. For them, life in their part of Italy has become intolerable in summer.
In such places I would simply evaporate. All 60 per cent of average water content in my body (80 per cent after a particularly good night) would disappear in an instant puff of steam, leaving a bag of rattling bones.
But, why the secrecy – the “say nothing to no one”, you might ask? We don’t want Ireland to be turned into another Venice, Barcelona or Dubrovnik, now do we, overrun with tourists looking for “the cool” every summer?
Heat, from Old English hætu, hæto, for “the quality of being hot.
