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I understand, of course that rain
is necessary - sometimes - in the same way that sun is necessary -
sometimes, but Nature seems to have a very poor sense of balance. In
many countries, rain is scarce and so infrequent as to be almost the
stuff of legends, while in Ireland we sometimes live almost like
fish, with more water in the atmosphere than air.
Now I realise that we seldom
experience the massive flooding that other countries do, but that is
because the rain here takes its time, it spreads itself throughout
the year; it is soft and insinuating. It tries to pretend it is not
raining at all.
"It's just a bit moist,"
you say to yourself, as you set out, "no need for the heavy
rain gear. People would only laugh." But after half an hour, you
notice that your clothes are getting heavier and there is water
running down into your eyes, even though there is still no evidence
of rain about. By the time you get back home about an hour later, the
water is running out of your pores and you are like something that
has been dragged from a river. That is the rain I think of as The
Stalker. Even worse, in some ways, is The Ambusher.
You stare hard at the sky as you
set out and it stares innocently back at you with its blue glaze. The
sun is shining brightly and everything is clear except for a few thin
edges of black cloud lurking on the horizon. There is no wind, so you
say confidently to yourself, "It's not heading this way."
You are halfway between where you
came from and where you are going when a heavy drop of water hits you
on the head. You look upwards incredulously and you get the whole
tankful right in the eyes. In the hissing of the downpour, you can
hear its sibilant voice, "I got him! I got him! I got him!"
The downpour last only about three minutes after which the vindictive
raggy cloud rushes back to the horizon, to lie in wait for some other
poor fool
The sun has reappeared and is
shining as brightly as ever, but it of no use to you now, wearing, as
you are, a suit of water.
Other types of rain I am familiar
with are the "Will I - Won't I?" showers and the "I'm
Never Going To Stop Raining Again" heavy drizzle, but my spirits
are too damp to continue.
Back in the Sixties and
Seventies, that era of odd happenings and even more odd thinking, the
Irish government of the time came up with a strange idea. "We
have all this water here," they said, "much more than we
can use, and some of the Arab states are desperately short of it. I
wonder if we could do a deal." The idea was that tankers of
water from Ireland would sail to (I think it was) Saudi Arabia, have
the water pumped from them and have the tanks refilled with oil. Oil
for water (or water for oil from the Arabs's point of view).
When you consider that some of
these Arab countries were thinking of having icebergs towed down from
the North Pole, the oil-water exchange most have seemed quite
feasible to those involved. But, for some reason, it never happened
and the Irish government of the present day would probably deny it.
(Denial is second nature to a crowd of wasters who deny that they
have any responsibility to the people who elected them).
In the mean time, does anyone
want a bit of rain? Lots and lots of it here. First class showers.
Wettest in the world. Anyone? |
