Lure of the sun is not without its drawbacks

Country Living with Francis Farragher

We’d all like a bit of nature to return to our summer weather and maybe at last there are signs that a little bit of heat is on the way.

Many years ago, nay even decades, I remember a particularly cantankerous geography teacher at Tuam CBS with a trusted reputation for increasing the elasticity of our cheeks, trying to elicit from his class, the reason why people went on summer holidays to Spain.

To many of us, it seem an entirely ridiculous subject of discussion as the nearest we’d ever come to a summer holiday would be a week in the bog, although in a good year, a trip to the Races might feature on the ‘end of July’ schedule.

Anyway, his question of the day to the class on one particularly bright May morning, was why families went on holidays to countries like Spain and Portugal.

Depending on the luck of the draw there was always one unfortunate class member who would be brought up beside the múinteoir’s desk, to act as the guinea pig.

When the question was put to him as to explaining the lure of the Mediterranean for that tiny minority of Irish families who took foreign holidays in the early 1970s, the lad replied nervously: “Well it must be the heat sir, People like the heat sir.”

The final sir had barely departed from his quivering lips than one of his plucs had been stretched by the short tempered múinteoir who then bellowed across the room: “It’s not the heat, you jackass, that brings people to Spain – it’s the sunshine.”

The wicked old geezer was probably right of course and just to get the message across with added impact he delivered a quick clatter to the jaw of the guinea pig, who was sent scurrying back to his desk with a red jaw and all the self esteem of an elderly spider.

Even more so than the rest of us, he certainly will never forget the difference between heat and sunshine, and that little tale of times past came whizzing into my head last week as we all complained about our disappointing May temperatures as we donned jackets and coats on our trips outdoors.

On one of those rather harsh May evenings last week, one of the items on the evening news focused on the rising death toll in the Indian heatwave – close on 1,400 people – as temperatures shot up to a rather incredible 47° to 48° Celsius.

Heat, like everything else in extremes, is not something to be savoured. Sunstroke or severe dehydration can, within a matter of hours, lead to severe debilitation and death, and, is the case with most afflictions in this world, it’s always the most vulnerable that’ll take the brunt of the suffering.

Outdoor workers such as labourers or farmers, beggars on the street, the elderly and the infirm, will be the first ‘to go’ when the heat wave strikes.

Even in so called advanced countries like France, thousands of people died in the great heat wave of the summer of 2003 when temperatures touched 40   Celsius. Too much heat is a far greater killer than storms, floods or great freeze-ups.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.