Almost a year ago, on Saturday, July 29th, 2006, an editorial on this page was headed "A month in the sun".
It quoted the words of the Gershwin song, "Summertime, an' the livin' is easy", talked of how "the country simmered, day after day, in warm sunshine", and rhapsodised about life on the beach or golf course and the joys of "going to work in shirtsleeves or summer dresses, lunching at a pavement cafe or in the park, or strolling on the sunlit streets". Yes, in Ireland.
What a difference a year makes. So far at least, summer 2007 has been one of the worst in living memory, a relentless procession of cloudy, wet, often windy and sometimes chilly days. Homes and businesses have been flooded, bridges swept away, holidays washed out, barbecues and picnics abandoned, beach and golf outings marred. June was the wettest recorded for over a century, with many places enduring twice the normal rainfall for that month, and July looks little better: parts of the east have already experienced one-and-a-half times the normal quota for the whole month. England has had a far worse time, with eight lives lost, close to 30,000 homes flooded, and damage estimated at over €2 billion.
Inevitably, many people have wondered if such unseasonable extremes are yet another sign of long-term climate change caused by human activities. But the question cannot be answered confidently; for as Brendan McWilliams has pointed out in his "Weather Eye" column, such abnormalities have long been a feature of our highly variable climate.
With the forecasters offering little prospect of immediate improvement, it is natural to be dispirited at the thought of more murky days ahead. Yet the contrariness that makes our weather often so maddening can also be a source of consolation. If we have chilly days in June that rightly belong to March, there may also - as this year - be a sudden outburst of summer days in April; we can have Indian summers in October or balmy spells in winter when, as Michéal Mac Liammóir wrote, "you may breakfast in your garden on sudden golden mornings of February or November". So who knows what August may bring?
It is also worth remembering that although our weather is often dull and sometimes miserable, it is rarely lethal: catastrophic loss of life because of hurricane, heatwave, tornado, flash-flood, avalanche, mudslide or tidal wave is thankfully unknown to us. If the more alarming predictions of climate change prove correct, that may change; so, difficult though it seems in these days, we might be well advised to make the most of our Irish weather, rain or shine, while we have it.