Paddy wasn’t built for sunshine. You see, he never had much practice at it, despite he convincing himself that every summer of his childhood was spent on his back in the fields looking up at a sky with ne’er a cloud to be seen. With the sun-tanned shape of his Casio digital watch festooned like a white tattoo on his freckled arms, he told himself that this would be the best country in the world if the sun shone all the time. He says that he never noticed the wimmen of the country ‘til the sun shone and that he never appreciated the natural beauty of the countryside either. And when the rain and the winds came and they did come with earnest for the best part of a decade, he wished that the day would come when it would be warm in the morning and warm at night and that then all his ills would be cured.
He said this because he knew this would never happen, that if we spoke enough misery in this country, we’d get the weather to match. And so he was right. On the night of the bank guarantee, the wind and rain started and they didn’t stop until about a fortnight ago, when Paddy, his voice broken from all the whinging from having to buy fodder for his flocks on the farm his ‘fodder’ flogged him, and lo and behold (and lower than he’d ever been held ), the morn was dry, the grass was growing, the birds were singing in the trees and out of the blue came the blue, cueing DJs to play the ELO song to death and for unsuspecting commuters to be singing “I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.”
And for a few days this was glorious, the sun baked down on his pale body, he lashed on the sunscreen and enjoyed the heat and the varying levels of clothing abandonment that took over the country. The delight increased when Met Eireann said that the hot spell would go beyond the weekend, and then the next and then the next and when he heard the New Zealander predict that the sun would shine until September 11, he lost the plot altogether.
Tossing and turning at night, unable to sleep with the heat, unable to leave the windows open for fear the bats would come in and get tangled in his hair, he spent each night listening to Met Eireann forecasts, forsaking his nightly ogle of Jean Byrne in the hope he’d hear her sigh ‘the hot spell is coming to an end”.
And the whole country joined in, wishing the sun would shine during the day but go away at night. It infected all our brains, our politicians driven mad by the Body Heat-type night temperatures got lost in escapades of lust during Dail time when no mode of behaviour was left unbroken. Even our ‘acknowledged hetrososexual’ president was dragged into the mix, Donegal got beaten by men from the stony grey soil of Monaghan, London beat everyone, almost, and Enda Kenny turned into Don Corleone.
So for now, Paddy lies low, spent like a character in an Alan Shatter novel, praying for the rain and the thunder and the miserable weather to match the outlook he had planned for himself, he sits in the corner and hugs his knees and rocks gently, telling himself, Paddy wasn’t built for the sunshine, Paddy wasn’t built for the sunshine....and how true it is.
