Really, it feels like we live in Westeros rather than Ireland. For the second year in a row spring has not arrived. This is April 28th and we are still getting frosty mornings. The hedgerows are only now beginning to leave. Migrating birds are stuck in France waiting for the weather to pick up before they arrive. What has happened the weather? Is this the climate change that was predicted, or are we just in a cyclical phase of cold winters and bad summers?
It is the ultimate expression of pathetic fallacy. As we languish in the sixth straight year of recession the nation limps into another failed spring. The mood of the nation is perfectly matched by the climate. And the weather is compounding the woes of the economy. Farmers have run out of fodder and the spring grass has not arrived. The government has had to introduce a form of dole for cattle and sheep. Sales in garden centres are down 25% as the spring planting fever has failed to take hold. Who would invest in a lawn chair or a barbeque in such weather?
The Sun Bathers; William Carlos Williams
A tramp thawing out on a doorstep against an east wall Nov. 1, 1933: a young man begrimed and in an old army coat wriggling and scratching while a fat negress in a yellow-house window nearby leans out and yawns into the fine weather
Mindship 