It has been hard luck for those who took holidays in the West over the past couple of weeks. One family did not have a single rainless day in the first week in Connemara. Even the fishermen in the family, who normally don't worry too much about rain, had a grouse: too strong a flow; the butts on which they stand were under quite a depth of water. Tourists in general, they say, spent a lot of time just cruising around in their cars through the driving rain. It's better, anyway, than staying indoors.
But still people move westwards. Last Saturday this family took six hours to get to Carna from Dublin. Only way is to start out at about 6 a.m. Contrariwise, a relative planning a business trip to Italy was phoned by the organisers of the occasion, who apologised, not for the 41 degrees Celsius which prevailed, but for the fact that the place he was to sleep in had no air-conditioning. Which makes you thing that not all Continentals coming west to Ireland will be expecting sun all the time. They might find the rain a refreshing change from Bochum or Padua. And the fresh Atlantic breeze, and the rollers crashing against the Cliffs of Moher or Aran or elsewhere.
And there is some good for certain trees. Earlier, frosts blighted or wiped out whole crops of apples, pears, plums, peaches and other fruits. But non-fruit-bearing trees, notably oaks, have benefited. Experts talks of "the Lammas Spurt". Suddenly, long shoots come out, bearing lovely young leaves of an orange-red hue. In fact we had two of these outbreaks on this eastern side, anyway. The first of them was in mid-June, causing more than mild surprise, and then a few days ago, the real thing arrived: shoots up to two feet long and of the distinctive colour.
An arbutus, too, has sent out new, light-green shoots all around, making of a bush what is almost a tree. But you can't win all the time. Carelessly, some small trees and various flowers and herbs were thought to be safely watered by the rain. Overhanging branches kept them dry. And, almost overnight, they were bleached and dead. Eternal vigilance, and so on.