Joni Was Right – Clouds Get In The Way

We’ve so had it with clouds out here in seaside North Dublin!

Grey clouds, greyer clouds, so dark grey they might as well be black clouds …

Threatening rain clouds … bringing rain clouds … closing off the sun clouds …

So what if you have to cancel that barbeque with your friends —again — clouds …

June days when the sky isn’t even sky anymore, just one shroud of dismal cloud stretched taut across the horizon.

Feckin’ clouds

What, clouds … those lovely fluffy things up in the sky?

That lull you into day-dreams, make you write dopey poetry or crap song lyrics as you gaze up at them floating cloudily by …

I wandered lonely as a cloud …

Hey, you get offa my cloud …

Get off is right …

Yes, those clouds … 

Boo, clouds…

And I don’t even care that people see funny shapes in them sometimes, or think they do, or bloody cheat with Photoshop and post one looking like a bear’s snout on Instagram …

Nah, Joni was right:

They only block the sun

They rain and they snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

Feckin’ clouds…

If you lived beside the sea in Ireland, as I do, you’d really know what I mean …

Like, for feck’s sake, here we are … what is it, mid-August, and instead of sweltering in the endless sun, heating our pandemic-addled bones, it’s overcast here — again!! 

As in one big, surly grey cloud hanging over a dreary North Dublin sky …

Hold on, I’ll show you … I’ll just open the window here and take a picture …

See? Not a smidgin of blue anywhere …

Sky … blue? … my ass!

Do you know what irritates me most … it’s those days when you know the sun is there … lurking, lighting up that cloud it’s hiding behind, bursting out every now and again, and just as quickly dodging back behind another you-know-what …

Oh, come out, dearest sun and dazzle me into lethargic bliss just one more time … light up another garden idyll a moment … 

But no, another miserable, sociopathically cloudy day …

Feckin’ clouds …

What was it, just a month ago, we had a week or more of regular, uninterrupted sunshine, and it was heaven on our North Beach …

The whole country was loving it … made us feel all giddy and Mediterranean.

Eating rocket leaves with dinner and cheese afterwards, like the Italians …

Coincided with me starting regular sea-swimming …

Oh what bliss to be alive on the same North Beach …sun on my gleaming, sea-filmed body as I rose majestic from the swooshing waves, and bounced out on to the white, hot sands …

Okay, floundered out, but still … 

And now … I still go every day, between showers, or the threat of showers from another glowering sky … and a crisp wind whips my pimpled haunches as I brave the depths, and shiver out on to the grey, wet sands …

And tell myself I’m loving it …

Actually I am loving it … but no thanks to those clouds, I tell you.

Not when you’re actually warmer in the sea, and I only turn proper cold when I get out …

Look, there are days when it’s wet and cold, and that’s kind of fair enough … we live in a temperate kind of place, not too hot, not too cold, blandly blah … 

But the days I really hate are those humid, warm ones, when you just know the sun could come put and do its  sunny thing, if it wanted too

Or if those damn clouds would let it.

Remember that Kate Bush song, Cloudbusting?

I’ve been thinking almost seriously, wouldn’t it be great if we could point some big, cloudbusting machine at the sky, and bust up those clouds … or at least blow them along out to sea …

You know those kind of ideas you used have as a kid, made complete sense to you and you couldn’t understand how they wouldn’t work?

Like I could never get why those panicky people locked in that falling elevator in those movies wouldn’t be grand if they all jumped up in the air the second before it hit the bottom?

Or, like that kid said, what if they had a war and nobody came?

But what about my cloudbusting machine, or one of those wind-blowing yokes, only ginormous …

Like the ones the caretaking company used to use in our estate … drove us mad … these soggy piles of leaves just blown along, and loads of them not picked up, brown bunches of mulchy leaves blocking up our shores and what not …

Maybe this cloudbusting machine might disturb the delicate Eco-system … like we do need rain and all that, obviously, and our mild climate is why we’re so green and scenic, and the people are so top-of-the-morning cuddly and whimsical and amusing for visitors … 

But how about green and scenic, and cuddly, and whimsical and amusing … and perma-tanned?

We could turn it on only at night time … or let it be cloudy and rainy when there’s something good on Netflix …

We could cheat just a little, huh?

Not cheat, really, just improve things, make them more real than real … 

Sort of Photoshop the weather …

It would make for great Instagram posts.

Maybe we could try it out … get some sort of EU grant, and do it for one summer …

Get the tourist board people on it … writing new slogans to bring in even more tourists 

‘Come to Instagram Ireland … where it only rains when you want it to.

 … And clouds don’t get in the way’

Feckin’ clouds…

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