Sun Panic

7th Sep 2011

Under the trade descriptions act this year’s “summer” could be taken to court and sued for misleading the population of Cork. As far as we’re concerned summer should be mean blue skies, sunburn and being laid out down in Youghal beach with your biggest concern being whether you should go get a 99 straight away or have a swim first.

Blue skies yawl

Naturally we expect most of the world’s elite and important souls hang on every word of this column and we have it on good authority that Mother Nature is an avid PROC reader so for your benefit Missus N we will define what a real Cork summer should be…

1. Being able to wear a t-shirt from when you get up until at least 8pm without ending up in the Mercy for a week.

2. Having at least one meal a day outdoors that isn’t interrupted by the plip-plop of raindrops into your tae.

3. Seeing human tomatoes walking around town on Mondays having spent the weekend “out de back” with no sun block on. Some laugh we used to get out of that.  

4. Being able to go to the beach at least once a week and not have to wear a coat while sun bathing.

5. Not having to keep apologising to drenched tourists in their anoraks.

One of the beaches on Heir Island - fast becoming our number one spot for balmy balmy

6. Attend at least one barbeque where the cooking apparatus doesn’t have to be brought inside every ten minutes to stop rain outing the flames.

7. Wear short pants and flip-flops at least twice a year without people sympathetically offering you loose change assuming you couldn’t afford proper warm clothes.

8. Balm out in Fitzgerald’s Park at least once and think that you don’t need that holiday in Spain after all ‘cause it’d be the exact same thing as what you’re experiencing now and it wouldn’t even be in Cork.

9. Going to inter-county GAA matches for the whole summer and not being knocked out in both codes before August.

10. Walking into the sea for a swim without doing the comical ‘shiver shake’ anti-coldness routine would be nice but if we have to have Baltic sea conditions we’d settle just for the sun on our crowns while we swim. The cold northwesterly gale dominating summer 2011 is a disappointing effort Missus Nature.
 

According to the PROC met office, summer, as defined by the criteria above, officially occurred on July 2^nd from 1pm – 8pm. That was it.

Smart economy? How about smart meteorology? We need some sort of weather machine yoke to blow away the clouds. Seriously. You'd be happy out on the dole then instead of being bunged up with four channels and the tae.

Portugal and Greece are experiencing similar stinging austerity measures to Ireland but at least when Pedro and Pythagoras lose their jobs they can still mince about in the sun, go to the beach and see uplifting bright blue skies.

Unemployed Paddy on the other hand has spent the summer peering through the condensation of a living room window thinking ‘I could make a dash for it now’ as the rain briefly changes from downpour to drizzle.

His best hope is for a break in the meteorological misery to nip out and sign on. Then it’s back to a dark living room for a bout of Judge Judy and updates on dole queue lengths with RTE news. 

SUN PANIC

As a result of the very sporadic periods of sun we have experienced in 2011, a condition heretofore to be known as “sun panic” has emerged in the native population. This is a state of mind exclusive to this island which causes normal sane people to get hysterical about getting outdoors during rare bouts of sunshine.

Like seeing a passing comet, a tornado or couple of Orca whales up around City Hall the thought of missing out on “the summer” while stuck in an office or factory causes untold anxiety and stress on employees who want to experience the now all too rare sensation of a warm sun on their faces.

New keyboards will be issued to all Cork IT workers

On those rare weekday evenings of glorious sunshine we’ve had over the last two months everyone is in a dash to get out in it. Sprinting out of work to their cars like Derval O’Rourke workers take off out the gate like they were a unit of the Cork Fire brigade on their way to somewhere hot.

Inevitably getting stuck in traffic, people get furiously frustrated as they know every second they miss out on will be repaid with hours of rain.

At places like Garretstown and Myrtleville you’ll hear the screech of brakes as workers arrive and eject themselves onto the beach like pilots bailing out of a stricken aircraft, their cars quickly parked at all sorts of angles.

Seanie Sull  just got a call to say its scorching below in Owenahincha. Everyone stand the feck back.

Sun panic may cause employees to lose their jobs, couples to break up and share prices plummet so it’s a serious local issue that needs to be addressed.

The only viable solution for desperate employees seeking sun is for employers to be obliged to let staff out of work if the temperature hits a stiffling twenty degrees.

Large air raid style sirens should be placed around the city and county and if the mercury touches the magic number loud air raid style wailing will prompt waves of panic stricken Corkonians to abandon their desks and head for the sun.

Thousands of these should be installed around the county and be set off by weather suitable for the beach

Garda motorbikes will screech their way to all major junctions waving through panic stricken beach traffic south to the beautiful coast where they can enjoy what few of sunshine Mother Nature decides to endow us with.

With smallies back at school,  college kids already sussing out off licenses and leaves beginning to trickle from the trees we’re still hoping that some September sun will bail us out and give us a few days sustained sunshine. Come on Aul Lady Nature, buck up and shine your sun on Cork!