Sunday 16 February 2020

On Storms and an Anglo-Irish Enigma.

We had a weird weather event today. After the relatively short excesses of Storm Desmond yesterday (Desmond? Derek? Something beginning with D) today was mostly calm and mild up until about three o’clock in the afternoon.

I noticed the sky growing black as a coalman’s cap, and then there was the most almighty clap of thunder, the like of which I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before, followed by the sudden onrush of storm force winds and driving hail. It lasted about half an hour and then became calm again. Is this something new and a manifestation of climate change, because I don’t remember a winter storm having a postscript like that before?

And talking of storms, I’m not sure I agree with the practice of giving them names. The storms seem to have got worse since they started doing that, and I suspect it’s bolstering their egos and making them try harder to make us miserable just because they can. But if they do have to have names, I think we should pay due regard to the fact that most of them come from the general direction of Ireland and call them things like Brendan and Aisling. The latter would be quite interesting because I doubt that half the English who saw it written down would know how to pronounce it, and those who heard it pronounced wouldn’t know how to spell it.

And talking of Ireland… I read a short biography of Erskine Childers yesterday. He was the man who wrote the early classic spy novel The Riddle of the Sands. He was a most fascinating person. It seems there was very little he didn’t do during his life, and he particularly distinguished himself by starting off as a true British patriot and supporter of empire, and then turned tail, took the side of the Irish independence movement, and ran guns to the IRA on his yacht. And what’s amusingly ironic is that the Irish eventually executed him because he supported the wrong side in their Civil War. And do you know what he did? He insisted on shaking hands with every man in the firing squad. How endearingly British was that?

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