The art of moaning even about glorious summer sunshine

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Being of a generation where the nearest one came as a child to a real summer holiday was the sponsored 15 minute morning programme on Radio Eireann, there is still the cousin of a guilty feeling about taking off for a week or so in the sun.

It doesn’t happen every year, but when it does, the words of the old Cliff Richard hit take a ramble through the remaining working strands of the brain: ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday, No more working for a week or two, Fun and laughter on our summer holiday, No more worries for me or you, For a week or two.’

The prospect of a few days in the sun is always pleasing to the mind’s eye, especially if we’ve been through a winter and spring barrage of wind and rain, although for my sins after about three days under that great globe in the sky, a certain amount of desperation always seems to set in.

As much and all as we nag and complain about Irish weather, the roughly 50 inches of rain that falls on our landmass during the course of any given year, does give us the most lush and fruitful of landscapes.

More than a couple of decades back, a few years after the traditional Isle of Man honeymoon, a trip to the sunny climes of Cyprus seemed to offer all the prospects of a serene time of blissful happiness.

However after day two of lounging around a swimming pool, with nothing to do, the penny dropped that the great dream of doing nothing under a warm sun, was not really all it was cracked up to be.

A tour of the local landscape did little to cure my woes – arid and baked countryside with barely a green perch to be spotted anywhere, apart from the odd irrigated patch.

How a meteorological service can survive in a place like Tenerife is slightly baffling. True the odd bit of cloud interrupts the glare of the sun on days here and there – a very welcome relief – while on a handful of days through the year, some rainfall does actually fall.

Such a scenario would be an unequivocal disaster for the thousands of customers who populate our taverns during the various weeks of the year. In Ireland, a dispute – well maybe just a friendly argument – can often develop between any three individuals at the bar counter over what the weather will be like over the next three days.

Even a trawl through the main national and international forecasters can throw up conflicting predictions for countries like Ireland and the UK, that are largely at the mercy of unpredictable Atlantic weather systems.