July 14, 2005
Heatwave
Tourists admire the view at Lough Inagh in Galway. The mountains are part of the Beanna Beola (Twelve Bens) range - Bencorr (left) and Bencorrbeg(right).
Last year on holidays in Italy, two tasks preceded every meal - where to find a tree to park under so the car wouldn't melt, and whether it was too hot to eat outside. I had to make the same decisions last week...in Letterfrack. There's nothing like an Irish heatwave.
It's been roasting since Sunday, as accurately predicted by the delightfully alluring weathergirls on TG4 (I'd swear that one of them read the weather wearing a catsuit one Saturday night. But I digress...).
The reaction of the general public has been predictable - everyone rushes outside to stare up at the new bright object in the sky - before a good number of them 'enjoy the sun' by sitting outside pubs all day and driving themselves daft with a heady mixture of sunstroke and alcohol.
Just as predictable has been the reaction of the media. The Ryan Tubridy Show dusted off an item that has been running every year since Marconi's time about the sight of funny old Irish people with red heads, scarlet necks and crimson legs. [You'd have thought that any show that replaces the Marion Finucane show would be, by definition, better. You'd be wrong, then. According to the Sunday Tribune, the choice was between Tubridy and Gareth O'Callaghan to host the show. which is a bit like asking a condemned man whether he'd like to be shot with a round bullet or a square one. Again, I digress]. Anyway, I have a different theory. It is the maroon sunbathers that deserve our praise, because clearly, they have only a passing, if briefly intense, relationship with the sun and it's wrinkle-enhancing tendencies. It's the ones with the all-over mahogany sheen that we should be stoning in the streets. This last week hasn't made any difference to them because they've been grilling themselves all year under sunbeds. Another decade or so, an entire generation of Irish women will be waddling around the streets like an army of raisins. So lets hear it for the Farmer's Tan!
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ireland,
irishblogs,monasette
Posted by Monasette at July 14, 2005 01:31 AM