We're used to precipitation in these parts, but the recent inclement weather is straining everybody's patience, as Rosita Bolanddiscovers
In case you haven't noticed, it's raining. Chances are, it's raining as you read this. Or if it's not raining now, it's either only recently very reluctantly stopped or is just about to pour once more with feeling. You'd think we'd be used to it by now. But every year, no matter what the weather was like 12 months ago, we go all goldfish-like with our memories, and are full of renewed optimism for a long hot summer.
So far though, the summer has been more soaking than scorching. This June was one of the wettest on record, with the Phoenix Park being the soggiest place in the State, coming in with almost 18 cm (seven inches). On June 22nd alone, the day following the oxymoron that was Midsummer's Day, the equivalent of an entire month's average rainfall was recorded in Rathfarnham in Dublin.
On Thursday, violent gusts of wind and rain resulted in the collective capsizing of 20 small boats at a children's sailing regatta in Dún Laoghaire, with over 100 people taken from the water in a major rescue operation. That evening, wind in Cork ripped one of the marquees in half where the Live at the Marquee series of concerts were taking place. This weekend, the Mullingar Agricultural Show has been cancelled due to the site being waterlogged, not the first such show cancelled this summer. And those attending the Oxegen music festival today and tomorrow are likely to need their wellies as much as they need their tickets.
In the absence of a weather ombudsman, we constantly complain to each other about the rain. Some people get so exercised they even call the State meteorological office, Met Éireann. This is not to complain about forecasts that didn't get things quite right, but to complain uselessly about the fact that it's raining.
"We do get complaints from the public regularly," admits Joe Bourke, head of Met Éireann's commercial division. "A lot of them would be dealt with at reception, but some of them, the more persistent ones, come through to me. Of course, there is nothing we can do about the weather, but it goes with the job that sometimes you have to deal with this kind of thing. In the last couple of weeks, there has been a noticeable trend of people ringing up to complain about the rain. I just hear them out, like a parish priest listening to confession. It's a case of letting people let off steam."
TP Ó Conchúir, who lives near Ballydavid, Co Kerry, is one of four people around the country who use traditional methods to forecast the weather.
"There used to be five of us but there are only four now," he explains. "There's a man in Kilkenny who watches flies, spiders and bees, a man in Galway who watches plants, a woman in Cork who watches the moon and the stars - she's the best of the lot of us - and I watch mammals.
"We pool our information and we're in constant touch with each other. This year, we've decided not to give a long-term forecast because we didn't get clear-cut signs from the sea and land. If it was going to be a fine summer, we'd have had the signs of it long before now."
SO WHAT WOULD the signs have been to indicate a hot summer? "The dolphins coming at the end of March. That's what I look for. It's not so much the dolphins themselves as what they feed on; the plankton . . . This is all stuff that has been handed down from generation to generation, and we keep it going."
However, as Ó Conchúir points out, "We're never going to have Spanish weather in Ireland. I think myself August will be good, once we get this next moon over us. It won't rain all summer. There will be fine weeks."
Tim Forde is general manager of Lahinch's Seaworld and Leisure Centre in Co Clare. The shop there, Neptune's, sells traditional beach toys such as buckets and spades, along with togs, suncream, sunglasses, goggles and windbreakers. How are sales going?
"I saw people yesterday walking round with their hoods up and the rain pouring off them and they were eating ice-cream cones," Forde reports cheerfully. "We always sell some buckets and spades, no matter what the weather is. I suppose once people get here, there's an element of them feeling they have to try and make the best of the weather. They have to be optimistic.
"But if the weather is bad in your own region in Ireland, you're definitely less inclined to want to go to the coast, and more likely to cancel, and the town here is quieter than it would usually be at this time of year."
Brian Nevin, marketing director with Panorama Holidays, thinks he has the psychology of the Irish worked out when it comes to breaking point with bad weather.
"Irish people seem to put up with two weeks of bad weather in the summer, particularly June," he says. "When it goes beyond that, into three weeks and into school holidays, that's when we start getting desperate phonecalls from people in mobile homes in the west with screaming kids in the background and parents asking us to get them out of there to the sun. We've got a lot of those kind of calls recently. We've had a phenomenal number of bookings the last couple of weeks. Bookings are up 200 per cent on this time last year."
NEVIN HAS NOTICED a trend developing in recent weeks. "Monday mornings are extremely busy. So are Sunday evenings, with people making internet bookings. It might be that people get to the end of the week, or the very beginning, and it's still raining and they decide they have to get away."
This weekend, Panorama are handling 6,000 holidays out of Ireland. By yesterday, less than 50 were left. "The Algarve and Lanzarote are the destinations we are getting most requests for, but everywhere is popular. Everything is selling."
"The bad weather is great news for us," confirms Clem Walshe, head of marketing at Budget Travel, glee in his voice.
"We have been inundated with bookings since late June, and it's considerably up on last year," he says. "It's definitely weather-related. We all know there's plenty of money around, but until now this year there hasn't been a great sense of urgency for booking holidays.
"A lot of families, in particular, have left it very late to book this year," says Walshe. "They must have been hoping the weather would improve before the school holidays ended. I mean, what are you going to do if you've rented a house in Kerry or Clare with your kids and you're all sitting there looking out at the rain?"
Like Panorama, Budget has seen a lot of internet bookings at specific times of the day.
"What we're seeing with web bookings is a lot of traffic between 8pm and midnight," says Walshe. "When I come in in the mornings and see those bookings, I have an image in my head of the working partner in the house coming home in the evening and them deciding 'Enough is enough, we have to book a holiday out of Ireland or I'll go mad.' "