It’s the season of the magic blue and yellow can!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

My front gate is a pretty reliable indicator of how much rain there’s been. When it’s dry it works a treat, but as the weather becomes wetter the gate swells, so you have to lift it slightly to slide the bar into the slat.

Hmm, think I’ll give it a little spray of WD-40, stop that rust spreading and lube the bolt to ease on its slidy way.

Mind you, I’d have to be blindfolded to need to rely on such tactile evidence of recent rainfall: the bottom corner of the garden is now a lake. The turlough in the field beyond has stretched its watery edges, as this year’s conveyor belt of brutal Atlantic storms relentlessly pummels in.

I find myself standing on the back step looking at the lake on what was lawn, wondering if the young oak and two year-old apple saplings will survive. They’re hardy buggers at the best of times and I chose old native Irish tree stock in the hope they’d be fitting for the climate.

So I stand there and stare at the lake, the gradient of the lawn and then head inside to watch the weather forecast. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Just more proof that you can take the boy out of London but you can’t take London out of the boy.

Turloughs exist almost exclusively in the limestone fringes of the West of Ireland. After more than 20 years of living here, I’m now used to the idea that lakes will rise out of completely dry ground, but when I first saw one, I was taken by surprise in more ways than one: not only because this huge lake had suddenly appeared in a perfectly dry field, but more because the Summer before they’d built a mini-village of holiday homes in that field, selling them off to innocent American punters dreaming of cowslips, cold ones and bodhrans.

After the lake rose, at least half of the houses were standing in water up to their ground floor windows, and I couldn’t for the life of me believe the chutzpah of the builders, who must have known.

“Right!” said I to myself back then, “Never choose a place to live around here unless you’ve seen the house in February!”

Anyway, I’m off to get the WD-40 to spray that gate bolt. Have to admit, there’s something strangely comforting about the blue bottle with the yellow label. If I’m willing to ignore the rather uncomfortable fact that WD-40 is so called because it was Dr Norm Larsen’s 40th formula for a Water Displacer to protect nuclear missiles; if I temporarily allow my principles to crumble into dust; to sigh and absurdly declare “Nyoocleear schmoocklear!”, then I can comfortably admit that I love WD-40.

To a man who’s no great shakes at anything practical, the little spray has, over the years, made me feel substantially less useless. I may not walk the macho path of power tools, saws and set squares, but thanks to that little spray I managed to score kudos as a young man.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.