-Caveat Lector-
>From Irish Times
Saturday, April 24, 1999
An Irishmans Diary
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By Kevin Myers
There is a day which sometimes occurs in Sweden shortly before the great
winter freeze sets in and which the Swedes call Gottbljitzentag, which
means, roughly, the day that God forgot. On that day, which occurs only
every five years or so and which is dreaded today just as much as it is in
folklore, the entire Baltic is lifted out of its ocean bed and dumped across
the Swedish landmass in the form of a bitterly cold and brutally violent
downpour. And it truly does seem like the day that God forgot. The rain is
so penetrative it can pierce slate. Certainly no allegedly waterproof
clothing can resist it. Rain is normally made of water, but there is
something deeply unaqueous about the substance from which this rain is hewn.
It is rather like a dark grey and greasy antifreeze, and is at a temperature
which would have long since turned mere mortal water into ice-cubes. And it
is curiously persisent stuff. It doesn't run off its victims like ordinary
water, but clings like a malevolent epidermis, a sort of vast and icy rash
chilling and killing its victims.
Sulphurous Greyness
Gottbljitzentag brings the death of the sun, which is not replaced by the
healthy nourishment of night, that dark and reassuring entity when torches
comes into their own and droplets of light arrive from distant suns, but by
a vast and consumingly sulphurous greyness, such as might have existed
before the Big Bang. The entire country is reduced to a protoplasmic stew of
cold and baffled molecules, waiting for the divine spark of creation to
transform their bleak and haphazard despair into purposeful order. Winds
sometimes moan across the landscape on this day, felling trees and unroofing
houses so as to maximise the misery of the Swedish population. The onset of
this appalling weather is normally preceded by the weak and impressionable
going mad in terror. Normally sedate and tranquil Swedes run amok, beheading
strangers with rye bread. Mothers suffocate their children rather than have
them experience the unspeakable misery of Gottbljitzentag. The upper storeys
of old peoples' homes are crammed with a traffic-jam of wheelchairs as the
elderly and the infirm queue to push themselves out of the windows, which
have special state-prescribed ramps for that purpose. Elks sink on that day.
Reindeer fall on their antlers. Lemmings lem. Schools are closed because so
many tiny Swedish tots are drowned on the playgrounds or die of hypothermia
in the sauna. In other words, it is a truly dire time for Swedes, who speak
of it with terror for months in advance. We too know the phenomenon,
although we do not call it Gottbljitzentag. We call it summer.
Sunlit skies
What perversity of human nature caused me to be ill with ecstasy the other
day while walking along a Kildare boreen, with primroses lying in great
golden swathes up the roadside banks, green shoots bursting everywhere, and
swallows scything through the sunlit skies? Every other country in Europe
takes spring weather for granted. Spring is spring. That is what it is.
Primroses, green shoots, swallows, sunlit skies, et cetera. All perfectly
normal. Not in Ireland. Not in bloody Ireland. My walk was in the single
hour of springtime which was allocated to the month of April. The rest of
the month, so far as I can see, has been imitating Gottbljitzentag with
remarkable success, with just a few windows of springtime dotted here and
there around the place in order to waylay innocent visitors from Africa.
Last Sunday week, for example, three martins arrived over my house in the
morning and began prospecting for nests. Within an hour heavy snow was
falling. Followed by sleet. Followed by frost. Followed by hail. Followed by
antifreeze-laden gales from Siberia. Followed by frost again. If there's a
market for frozen swallow steaks, I can put a bit of business to Birds Eye.
Ditto house martins. Ditto swifts, but not yet. We have the climate of the
doomed. Our actual summer this year has already occurred. It took place on
March 17th, and people of Ireland were so overwhelmed there were marches of
astonished joy all over the land to celebrate and to welcome the new season.
Foolish, foolish marches. The next day Gottbljitzentag's nastier older
brother arrived, turning pastures to porridge and meadows to mousse.
Rain and winds
But at least this year we had a summer's day, albeit a little one a little
early. We didn't last year, not in the entire length and breadth of it. From
January 1st to December 31st it was a single Gottbljitzentag, with a few
glimpses of sunlight here and there in order to lure African song-birds to
their doom. The rest of the year consisted of cold and sulphurous skies and
a ceaseless diet of rain and cold winds. Pray: does anyone actually remember
what midsummer's eve was like? Gottbljitzentag to a tag. Yet so complete is
our refusal to admit that we live in the great Gottbljitzentag warehouse,
from which every country in the world is issued with its vilest weather,
that DIYs across the land are now stocking up with barbecues, charcoal and
outdoor aprons and chemists' shelves groan with Ambre Solaire. It makes
about as much sense as pygmies buying skis in December. The great con of
summer is upon us, and ahead lies a valley of antifreeze.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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