Blowin’ in the wind

A storm in Ireland is a lot like a drunk auntie at a party: You know the danger is coming long before it actually arrives, everyone awaits it with a mix of trepidation and excitement, and, when it has all blown over – provided that nobody was killed – it gives everyone something to talk about for the next couple of weeks.

By the time you read this article, dear reader, Storm Agnes will probably have passed, but the conversation around Her Windiness will have only begun.

Today, across the country, water cooler waffling, shop front slabbering and all other forms of casual conversations will be dominated by reports of wobbly trees, de-tiled roofs, and the potential migration paths taken by items of clothing that were mistakenly left out on the line.

“I know they were not in the best of shape,” husbands will remonstrate with their wives, “but they were my bloody lucky drawers!”

“Shut yer gob, Francy – they had more holes in them than that story you tried to spin me when ye came home smelling of stout last Monday night.”

There are parts of the world where to be excited by a weather warning would be an act of the utmost stupidity, or, even worse, a manifestation of some self-sabotaging, masochistic pathology.

For example, I cannot imagine that there are too many Pacific Islanders who experience an enjoyable hit of adrenaline when the weatherman announces that the sea floor is seeming a bit shaky of itself.

Likewise, I doubt that there are a lot of South Carolinians who walk towards cyclone season with a spring in their step.

I was in India a lock of years ago – which, of course, explains why I am such a culturally well-rounded character – and I recall the locals speaking about the monsoon months with the same dread that schoolchildren talk about the bogeyman.

Here, however, for the most part anyway, we are blessed with a fairly restricted weather spectrum.

This means that when we hear that Ireland is due to be hit by a ‘serious storm’ or, even better, ‘the tail end of a hurricane’, we simply fire up the heating, flick on the TV, and relax into that state of unparalleled comfort that comes with knowing that the outdoors is totally off-limits.

“Of course I would love to go for a run today, darling, however, in accordance with the amber weather warning issued by the Met Office’s leading experts, I must remain on my lazy arse all evening, eating Nobby Nuts and watching re-runs of Only Fools and Horses.”

There is simply no laziness that can compare to Met Office mandated laziness.

Today, with everyone having spent last night with one eye on the TV and the other turned towards the window, much like the post-scene assessments of your auntie’s drunkenness at the family party, estimates of how severe Storm Agnes really was will vary widely.

While some of the more instinctively stoic people among us will thank the Lord above that Agnes held her drink okay, others, prone to drama and and the art of hyperbole, will tell exaggerated tales of menacing clouds, ferocious winds, and how we only narrowly avoided a catastrophe of biblical proportions.

Anyway, here is hoping – for the sake of this column’s credibility and the welfare of all the inhabitants of our small island – that Anges blows over with all the banality that I reckon she will.

Stay safe out there – and, hey, go easy on your auntie. She was only having a bit of fun.