For the duration of the pandemic, the Academy, a music venue on Middle Abbey Street in Dublin has been keeping itself (and everyone who passes it) amused by using signage that previously declared what band was on, for messages alternating between advocating for the live events sector, to general lightheartedness. Its latest: "The weather app is lying to us."
The changeable weather, our yearning for “an outdoor summer” and people’s reliance on an app that selects a single icon for an entire day of Irish weather (never a good idea for our plot-twist climate) have colluded to make everyone feel the forecast has become less dependable.
"It's because of the reduced air traffic," a friend says on Thursday evening, as we stand in his back garden (in the rain) drinking bottles of beer. I make a mental note to fact-check this compelling theory when I get home, and lo: a Forbes article declares that in 1998 the World Meteorological Organisation created the aircraft meteorology data relay panel, which collects data transmitted by aircraft – more than 700,000 weather observations on an average day – to hone more accurate forecasting. Since the pandemic hit, the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reported an 80 per cent drop in meteorological readings due to flight cancellations. "Fascinating," I think, wondering about the weather up high and remembering a 2015 story about an Aer Lingus pilot who flew into a rain shower, in darkness, to clear sea salt that had caked her aircraft's windscreen. Smart.
Used cars
Listening to a podcast about inflation in the United States, one figure jumps out: a 10 per cent increase in the price of used cars between March and April alone, the biggest monthly increase since 1953. One of the reasons for this bizarre rise is because car-rental companies sell millions of used cars back to dealers every year. Except that's not happening because the car-hire companies already offloaded their stock early on in the pandemic. "Fascinating," I think, staring into the fridge, wondering if there is something – anything – new I can cook beyond the repertoire of now thousands of meals in a row prepared at home since last March. Wait, what was going on in 1953? Aha, a 1952 steel strike that caused employment in car manufacturing to drop by 100,000. "Fascinating," I think, searching derelict country hotels for sale, my rabbit hole du jour.
I procrastinate by scrolling Sartre quotes wondering what popular philosophical movement will coalesce now, as existentialism went mainstream during and after the second World War. “Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” Good point well made, JP.
‘Everything is annoying’
I go on Twitter, and a tweet from Panti pops up: “Please give me loads of money so I can lie around in a kaftan and do nothing in particular for the rest of my life. Maybe the occasional selfie, but nothing more taxing.” I relate to this, so I send the tweet to a friend. “Busyness needs to be removed from all of life,” she says, “No one has any energy any more. Not a single drop.” “Everything is annoying,” I offer, with remarkable insight.
“I want to quit my job,” says the umpteenth person. “I’m just sick of work – what’s the point?” Stories abound about people logging off and dropping out, prompted either by work loss, screen-job fatigue or a fit of Sartre, sending people fleeing the capital, locked out of housing, now living in cottages halfway up mountains or in country towns. Everyone seems to be very into psychedelics as a therapeutic crutch. People are making candles. Relationships are breaking and forming under pressure, like sedimentary rock. The shops have opened up but people have kept up their swimming, their vegetable-growing. The sourdough starter is more than a year old now.
Musicians have gone back to college, restaurateurs have become delivery people, middle-class suburbanites have opened city grocery shops, children already struggling never went back to school, there's an 8 per cent rent hike on the horizon for people on the pandemic unemployment payment. What will the city look like if only those who can afford €1,745 a month (now the average rent in Dublin, according to the Residential Tenancies Board) live here? I read a briefing paper for the Economic Policy Institute published in September 2009 that talks a lot about economic scarring. What about pandemic scarring?
The potential of a new era, an idea made possible only when everything stopped last spring, appears now to be filtering out into the real world in unexpected ways, like when all the different kinds of Spider-Men suddenly arrive in Into the Spider-Verse (good film, that). But more than any other change, what people have had, which nobody is making any more of, is time. Time to sit with one's thoughts, time to reflect, time empty of engagements, time to ask: 'What do I want?' I wonder how society will orientate around such a vast, seismic shift in people's priorities. I think about how much money Malcolm Gladwell is going to make out of all of this.
The app says rain, but it’s sunny outside. Everything changes, I suppose, like the weather.