In other parts of Ireland it might be the call of the cuckoo, or the appearance of butterflies, or the sudden hissing of sprinklers on parched lawns. But in Dublin, it's different. In Dublin, the first sure sign of summer is when you start noticing how extraordinarily filthy the footpaths are, writes Frank McNally.
For about 10 months of the year, the city benefits from a simple but highly efficient street-cleaning system, known as rain. Despite being both cheap and environmentally friendly, rain-based sanitation works perfectly, leaving streets and footpaths glistening, without the use of detergent. It is also extremely reliable. Indeed, only last week we were complaining about how reliable it was. But as Joni Mitchell sang, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone". And it takes a dry week in Dublin to make you appreciate the role rain plays for the city's cleansing department.
The warm spell has barely begun and already some footpaths are so dirty that you can no longer see the spots left on them by trod-in chewing gum. I'm not talking about litter here - not the litter you can put in bins, anyway. I'm referring to the dried-up liquid run-off of human habitation: the spilt beer, the melted ice-creams, the leaked bus oil, and the many non-mechanical leaks to which humans are liable.
Over the June weekend, city-centre footpaths assumed the appearance of canvases from late-period Jackson Pollock (when his work became darker, predominantly black). True, there were splashes of colour here and there, where somebody had thrown up as recently as last night. But mostly it was as if Jack the Dripper had attacked the pavements, flinging, splashing and splattering his dark-hued paints with the urgency of a man who had an exhibition opening on Tuesday.
The desiccated traces of wild nights were everywhere you looked. Some traces were more explicable than others. Near alleyways and doorways, and anything that resembled a recess in a wall, dried-up Mississippi deltas of urine meandered towards the street. Here and there was a splotch that might have been blood. But many leaks were already so old that only a forensic scientist could tell if they had passed through human bodies en route to the ground.
Then there was that strange liquid that oozes from the bottom of rubbish bins, like effluent from silage pits. Over holiday weekends, bins are packed with rubbish, some of it organic. As the sun goes to work (and the refuse collectors don't) the bin becomes a composting unit. The run-off, if collected, would probably be valuable as garden fertiliser. Maybe you could run cars on it. Instead, last weekend, it too had joined the great Pollock pavement canvas.
I've written before about how an unintended effect of the smoking ban was to give Dublin the air of a Mediterranean port, with lightly dressed men and women grouped in the doorways of bars and restaurants all year round, smoking. Usually, goose pimples on the smokers' exposed arms betray the fact that this is an island in the north Atlantic. In summertime, however, the Mediterranean port picture is complete, down to street-surface squalor that makes Palermo look like Geneva.
Incidentally, the current warm spell again highlights the glaring defect of the smoking ban. No reasonable person wants smokers to suffer (unduly). But as they stand in the sunshine outside bars and hog all the outdoor tables at restaurants with terraces, it is obvious that smokers are now enjoying themselves in a way the anti-smoking law never intended. When will the Government see sense and amend the ban so that, on hot days and in premises where outside facilities are available, smoking is only allowed indoors?
Anyway, getting back to street level and Jackson Pollock, one apparent consequence of ground conditions in Dublin has been the disappearance of pavement artists. Not long ago, these were a regular feature of city life, and some were very talented. Using only chalk, they could dash off a good copy of Leonardo's Last Supper at the top of Grafton Street during lunchtime. These days, the nearest you get to footpath art is some chancer scrawling a poem or an ancient Irish blessing to score easy money off tourists.
The rain was always a hazard for the true pavement artist, capable of wiping his work out in seconds. But the hygiene levels of Dublin footpaths threatened to wipe the artist out too. At any rate, the breed seems to have disappeared. Maybe it moved to Paris, or somewhere else where the streets are washed every morning.
It used to be that after a dry spell, Irish farmers would be praying for rain, and conscientious urban dwellers would be made to feel guilty for enjoying sunshine at the expense of country cousins. Now it's the city council and the chamber of commerce you feel sorry for in a drought, cruelly deprived as they are of the only thing that keeps Dublin looking half-decent. So if we have a deluge again soon, I hope farmers will be understanding. Annoying as the rain might be, they should realise that city people probably needed it.