In the grey of the vegetable garden in shirt sleeves and flip-flops
‘MEDDERS, what are you doing?’ (Note: dear reader, by the time you see this piece, palm trees may have spontaneously sprouted on O’Connell Street. Flamingos may have colonised Lough Derg. And riots may be breaking out in the queues at Brown Thomas for the factor 50 sun cream. But, as I write, the plaintive sound of starving cattle haunts the land. The shops have sold out of wellingtons. And each apple tree in the orchard at The Manor sits forlornly in its own individual puddle of scummy green water. Now back to the plot…) ‘Medders, what are you doing?’
It was perfectly clear what I was doing. Hermione could see that I was walking around the kitchen wearing boxer shorts and a rather natty singlet embossed with the logo of the Chicago Bulls. No slippers. No fluffy dressing gown. No cardigan. I had arrived for breakfast in underpants and vest.
‘You’ll catch your death.’
‘Hermione, it’s April – or hadn’t you noticed? I have decided to cast aside the shackles of winter.’
‘But no need, surely, to cast aside the flannelette night-shirt too. The hairs are standing up on your arms. Your feet have turned a hideous yellowy white.’
‘Nonsense, darlling. The time has come for some positive thinking around here. The longer we swaddle ourselves in blankets and woollies, the longer we remain stalled in the mire of hibernation.’
‘Medders, there is no logic whatever to what you are saying. The forecast is lousy. The thermometer is stuck in single figures. And I haven’t seen the tortoise since September.’
She may have been right, of course. Clear thinking Hermione usually is right, though I found that I was at least warm enough to keep hypothermia at bay as long as I kept moving. The urge to make summer happen by wearing summery clothes must be inspired by a primitive instinct and I felt that instinct strongly.
The past six months have been illuminated, if that is the correct word, by a rainbow of red, orange and yellow weather warnings, with all of Ireland cowed as Emma and Ophelia did their damnedest. But the red, orange and yellow hues had no existence beyond the pretty charts of Met Eireann. And the excitement of the storms followed by the grizzly chill of the Beast from the East has been succeeded by the glum, damp greyness which has finally pushed me over the edge.
Grey. Grey. Grey.
No one writes sonnets to grey. No one looks forward to grey. No one cites grey as their favourite colour. Men in the grey suits are harbingers of gloom. A grey area is no man’s land. Manchester United followers still recall with a shudder the day their team travelled to play Southampton wearing a new grey away strip. The result (tee-hee!) was an unexpected defeat for the high flying visitors and an aversion to grey which still persists around Old Trafford to this day 22 years later.
Hermione at least prevailed upon me to pull on a pair of trousers, a shirt and a pair of flip-flops before I set off into the misty drizzle which seems to have been camped over the Our Town district for months on end. She refused to go with me. The children refused likewise. The Pooch seemed keen at first but then turned back with a whine after three seconds exposure to the cold, grey damp. He scuttled into the house just before the back door I had left jauntily open was slammed shut by some unseen hand.
My intention was to plant seed potatoes which have been on standby since January. I feel potatoes should be in the ground by Saint Patrick’s Day, certainly by the end of March. So I set about playing catch-upt, digging a trench for the Roosters. I persuaded myself that the moisture on my brow was perspiration caused by hard work rather than precipitation caused by the latest cold front sweeping in from the Atlantic. But as I was poised to drop the first of the spuds into the sodden trench, the reality hit home. If I went ahead, I would be drowning this potato rather than planting it…
Hermione had a fire lit, bless her. I hooshed The Pooch off the rocking chair, pulled a duvet around me and settled down to read a good whodunit.