In a Word ... Precision

And the rain fell, having no alternative, on the nothing new (with apologies to Samuel Beckett). It rained and rained all day long. A second flood of biblical proportions seemed under way with no child in the house washed and no Ark built.

Supplies were low, and where once there had been a pavement outside my door there was now a river in full spate. It didn’t matter. I must go forth.

I checked the weather app on my phone. It told me the day had been dry up to then but that there would be “light showers in 26 minutes”.

“The wonders of modern technology,” I told myself.

Actress by Anne Enright: a writer performing at the peak of her powers

---

Books in brief: From Jane Austen’s protective sister to Pieter Bruegel the Elder

---

Old favourites: Anton Chekhov, A Life by Donald Rayfield

---

It was the precision that got to me. Being wrong (again) is one thing, but how can it manage to be so precisely wrong?

No one expects weather apps to always be correct in Ireland. The technology has yet to be invented that could keep up with a weather system that changes with as much volatility as the Irish electorate. So I make allowances.

But the precision always gets to me. It suggests a groundless confidence. Who do you think you’re fooling being so precisely wrong, Mr Weather App?

As a non-driver I use public transport a lot. It is a wish of mine to claim credit for this as a long-standing personal effort to avoid adding to the carbon footprint. Or to damaging the ozone layer.

Remember when the ozone was about to leave a hole in the atmosphere, allowing the sun burn us all to a crisp? Whatever happened that anxiety?

Sure, there’s always something.

My lifelong non-driving followed one lesson with my father when the gears jammed on a bridge in the middle of the road with traffic ahead and behind and my father losing it, and me losing it, and me getting out of the car never to drive again. I was 15. He was apoplectic.

Anyhow, there’s a bus I get from Ballaghaderreen that is scheduled for 16.24pm. Not 16.20. Not 16. 25. But 16.24. Such irrelevant precision.

It rarely arrives before 16.25pm. Why would anyone in an office somewhere insist on timetabling a bus travelling through rural Ireland for such an exact time? Being wrong is one thing, but insisting on being so precisely wrong is seriously provocative.

Precision from Latin praecisionem, for 'a cutting off'.

inaword@irishtimes.com