Whiling the Winter away with a peep into future

Country Living with Francis Farragher

On one of those especially dreary days last week where daylight never really got a hold and the rain kept spitting down, a schoolboy choir belted out: ‘Let it snow, let it snow . . .’ and despite their best effort the dank greyness of December just crushed their spirited effort at getting us all into the Christmas mood.

And yet, as we bade farewell to the so-called shortest day of the year last week, there seems to be little indication of the winter gloom retreating, as the sun only reaches an altitude of 12 or 13 degrees as compared to 60 degrees during the height of Summer.

It is though a time for a glance through the almanacs and weather guides that stake their claim in the world of long range predictions, with the original of the species – Old Moore’s Almanac – still a popular repository for at least 50% of the population of this island of ours.

Do most of us though really believe that the predictions of a publication, dating back to 1764, will hold true for the coming year? Well, not really, but it always makes for a lively pub conservation with often the first fine week of the Summer being attributed to the forecast of ‘Ould Moore’ who according to popular wisdom is ‘never too far off the mark’.

An almanac [sometimes spelt almanack in older English] is, according to the Collins dictionary, a yearly calendar giving ‘statistical information on events and phenomena, such as the phases of the moon, times of sunrise and sunset, tides and anniversaries’, but the lure of Old Moore is in his predictions of things we don’t know about for the coming year. There is always a strange and sometimes disturbing lure about wondering what lies ahead for us.

Old Moore was no ‘flat’ – a learned scholar who ran an academy in the then Dublin village of Milltown (former home of Shamrock Rovers), teaching Irish, English, the Classics as well as being a highly-respected mathematician. Back in 1764, Theophilus Moore published his first almanac, and it quickly established itself as the authority on what would lie ahead for the coming year.

The publication still survives today – even in this world of iPhones, Twitter, Facebook and other social media – mixing the factual with the speculative in almost equal measures. Weather-wise, Old Moore’s modern day equivalent, is New Zealander Ken Ring, who also specialises in predicting what lies ahead for us well over a year in advance. Like Old Moore, Ken Ring makes a good living from his predictions and doesn’t mind one jot drawing down the wrath of all the world’s top meteorologists and weather scientists.

Old Moore’s predictions in the 2017 edition of the almanac won’t do a lot to dissipate our current winter gloom with only brief interludes of ‘good stuff’ predicted through the course of the year.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.