There is a day which sometimes occurs in Sweden shortly before the great winter freeze sets in and which the Swedes call Gottbljitzentag, which means, roughly, the day that God forgot. On that day, which occurs only every five years or so and which is dreaded today just as much as it is in folklore, the entire Baltic is lifted out of its ocean bed and dumped across the Swedish landmass in the form of a bitterly cold and brutally violent downpour.
And it truly does seem like the day that God forgot. The rain is so penetrative it can pierce slate. Certainly no allegedly waterproof clothing can resist it. Rain is normally made of water, but there is something deeply unaqueous about the substance from which this rain is hewn. It is rather like a dark grey and greasy antifreeze, and is at a temperature which would have long since turned mere mortal water into ice-cubes. And it is curiously persisent stuff. It doesn't run off its victims like ordinary water, but clings like a malevolent epidermis, a sort of vast and icy rash chilling and killing its victims.
Sulphurous greyness
Gottbljitzentag brings the death of the sun, which is not replaced by the healthy nourishment of night, that dark and reassuring entity when torches comes into their own and droplets of light arrive from distant suns, but by a vast and consumingly sulphurous greyness, such as might have existed before the Big Bang. The entire country is reduced to a protoplasmic stew of cold and baffled molecules, waiting for the divine spark of creation to transform their bleak and haphazard despair into purposeful order. Winds sometimes moan across the landscape on this day, felling trees and unroofing houses so as to maximise the misery of the Swedish population.
The onset of this appalling weather is normally preceded by the weak and impressionable going mad in terror. Normally sedate and tranquil Swedes run amok, beheading strangers with rye bread. Mothers suffocate their children rather than have them experience the unspeakable misery of Gottbljitzentag. The upper storeys of old peoples' homes are crammed with a traffic-jam of wheelchairs as the elderly and the infirm queue to push themselves out of the windows, which have special state-prescribed ramps for that purpose.
Elks sink on that day. Reindeer fall on their antlers. Lemmings lem. Schools are closed because so many tiny Swedish tots are drowned on the playgrounds or die of hypothermia in the sauna. In other words, it is a truly dire time for Swedes, who speak of it with terror for months in advance.
We too know the phenomenon, although we do not call it Gottbljitzentag. We call it summer.
Sunlit skies
What perversity of human nature caused me to be ill with ecstasy the other day while walking along a Kildare boreen, with primroses lying in great golden swathes up the roadside banks, green shoots bursting everywhere, and swallows scything through the sunlit skies? Every other country in Europe takes spring weather for granted. Spring is spring. That is what it is. Primroses, green shoots, swallows, sunlit skies, et cetera. All perfectly normal.
Not in Ireland. Not in bloody Ireland. My walk was in the single hour of springtime which was allocated to the month of April. The rest of the month, so far as I can see, has been imitating Gottbljitzentag with remarkable success, with just a few windows of springtime dotted here and there around the place in order to waylay innocent visitors from Africa. Last Sunday week, for example, three martins arrived over my house in the morning and began prospecting for nests. Within an hour heavy snow was falling. Followed by sleet. Followed by frost. Followed by hail. Followed by antifreeze-laden gales from Siberia. Followed by frost again. If there's a market for frozen swallow steaks, I can put a bit of business to Birds Eye. Ditto house martins. Ditto swifts, but not yet.
We have the climate of the doomed. Our actual summer this year has already occurred. It took place on March 17th, and people of Ireland were so overwhelmed there were marches of astonished joy all over the land to celebrate and to welcome the new season. Foolish, foolish marches. The next day Gottbljitzentag's nastier older brother arrived, turning pastures to porridge and meadows to mousse.
Rain and winds
But at least this year we had a summer's day, albeit a little one a little early. We didn't last year, not in the entire length and breadth of it. From January 1st to December 31st it was a single Gottbljitzentag, with a few glimpses of sunlight here and there in order to lure African song-birds to their doom. The rest of the year consisted of cold and sulphurous skies and a ceaseless diet of rain and cold winds. Pray: does anyone actually remember what midsummer's eve was like? Gottbljitzentag to a tag.
Yet so complete is our refusal to admit that we live in the great Gottbljitzentag warehouse, from which every country in the world is issued with its vilest weather, that DIYs across the land are now stocking up with barbecues, charcoal and outdoor aprons and chemists' shelves groan with Ambre Solaire. It makes about as much sense as pygmies buying skis in December. The great con of summer is upon us, and ahead lies a valley of antifreeze.