As I write, it’s been raining for hours.
I write and sleep in the attic, under big rooflights, almost in the weather, the soundscape of rain and wind exaggerated by glass. All immigrants to Ireland are asked, ruefully or gleefully, how we like the weather, and I have the feeling that I’m often doubted when I say that it’s just the same where I grew up in Scotland and northern England.
I grew up in an outdoor family, hiking in all seasons, cycling everywhere. You’re not made of sugar, my Yorkshire grandfather used to say, meaning you won’t melt in the rain. No such thing as bad weather, my parents said, setting out up the hills (only bad children, I muttered to myself). At the time I was resentful and incomprehending: why would anyone climb a mountain in the rain when they could stay inside with a book? Why did grown-ups, who could do anything they wanted, choose to be uncomfortable, and choose to make me uncomfortable? These days, I get it.
I was interested but not surprised by a recent report that young Irish people are more likely to avoid rain than their parents and grandparents. There’s a temptation to disparage the youth of today: when I were a lass we had to break the ice on the weekly bathwater and thought ourselves lucky to have taps, etc. (No, of course not; my immigrant father was horrified by 1970s British sanitary arrangements. We had daily hot showers, though the Victorian house was cold enough for woolly jumpers and sometimes hats as indoor wear. I still consider this perfectly reasonable – why would the Lord have given us knitting if we were meant to have the heating roaring expensively day and night?) More likely, I think, rain is a pleasure of maturity, the appreciation of weather won by experience. You maybe have to have come in from the rain a good few times to understand.
I enjoy Ireland’s weather, take pleasure in rain and whinge on hot days
Choosing a nice mug, bowl or spoon is not a trivial matter
Irish and English funerals are very different – it would be strange to go to a colleague’s family funeral in England
To normalise invective against cyclists is to miss the point spectacularly
The weather is among the things I enjoy about living in Ireland. I wilt and whinge in on hot days, get up absurdly early to run and cook and anything else requiring a cool heart and hands and then stay indoors, plotting to move back to Iceland, where I also appreciated the climate, though even while I lived there signs of the climate emergency appeared. The first apples in a thousand years of human habitation ripened outside. A sinister sign, for sure, and also fresh fruit is nice.
[ Q&A: What should we do about multiple climate risks threatening Ireland? Opens in new window ]
I like the variety of a temperate climate, the way the weather is always interesting and the light and sky always changing. I like the intense colours of everything after rain, the way the air smells newly washed. I like the way Dublin Bay comes and goes, depending on the height and thickness of the clouds; sometimes the Forty Foot looks almost within swimming distance of Howth (don’t try this at home, obviously), other times there’s only faith that it’s there. It would be great if the roads drained better, but I like the reflections in puddles and the patterns of raindrops and the way I find myself hopping, skipping and jumping where I usually walk or run. Rain breaks our rhythms, and as any poet will tell you, that’s when things get interesting.
I found a vocabulary for the joys of rain in Japan. The first time I travelled there, I joined a small group of hikers, mostly Australian and from the southern US. After some dry days, rain came. They were surprised, believers in whole seasons of sun and rain, in some cases from places where it hadn’t rained for years. (I couldn’t fathom it – how could anything live?) I had rain gear, they didn’t; I felt sorry for them. Don’t be, one said, it’s a treat for us, cool water falling from the sky, we didn’t expect it but it’s delightful.
Later, back in Kyoto, I wandered Buddhist temples and discovered “rain gardens”, designed to play with that falling water. There were small soundscapes of bamboo pipes and channels that sang together in the rain, trees arranged to bestow drops on ponds in pleasing patterns, tiny shelters from which to admire these effects. Like many Europeans, I fell in love with such Japanese aesthetics, came home wondering why, with a similar climate, we don’t celebrate it in similar ways; why we continue to think of cool water falling from the sky as bad news.
