In a Word... Cool

It’s time we completely revamped our tourist image of Ireland. Yes, we do well in attracting foreign visitors but there is so much more potential. To begin, I’d get rid of that Fáilte Ireland moniker. This has nothing to do with its dubious sponsorship of the weather on RTÉ television, just that it sounds too much like Fawlty Ireland where the neighbours are concerned and we do not need to feed into any more of their unflattering prejudices about us.

No, it should be renamed “Cool Ireland”. The entendre is double, but in the best possible taste. It can mean that Ireland is the most “in” – as in fashionable – place to be, as well as being literally “cool”.

We must wake up to and realise what an advantage our weather is in a world that is becoming increasingly hotter, and not in a sexual sense.

Look at the US east coast these months or, increasingly, at Mediterranean countries where summer temperatures now approach an impossible 40 degrees. Hell is cooler (I’m told!). Not to mention the temperatures in the Middle East or North Africa.

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It’s time we woke up and smelled thesoft day, thank God. It’s time we told the world our summer temperatures rarely hit the late 20s, that we have rare heat ripples – never heat waves – and how a gentle Atlantic rain travels 3,000 miles to caress and sustain our fair Irish skin.

Welcome to Ireland, a land of unspoiled countryside and unspoiled people who still instinctively reach for black beer and Kerr’s Pinks despite decades of exposure to fine wines and more varieties of cuisine than there are stars above Aran.

Come to Ireland, a land without shadow and where they yet have to develop an app that can keep up with the showers for, invariably, when rain is forecast it shines and when sun is promised it rains.

Come to beautiful Ireland where, in summertime, you get up to 20 hours’ daylight or, in wintertime, up to 24 hours in a pub. Yes, come to Cool Ireland, which might have invented the phrase that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. Stay cool forever. Come to Ireland.

(What do you think? Am I hired?)

Cool, from Old English col, for “neither warm nor cold”.

inaword@irishtimes.com