I would like to apologise to my Irish readers for the current spell of unseasonable fine weather.

I know Irish summers should be cold and damp with frequent showers with the occasional flash flood, tornado or hurricane. But for the last few days, it has been warm [some might even say hot?] and sunny. I’m sorry about this.

You see, I’m to blame.

I have always had this weird knack of being able to control the weather. If I buy a pair of sunglasses, we don’t see the sun for months. If I buy a new pair of windscreen wipers for the car, then the rain vanishes. They have to introduce hosepipe bans and the entire population of Galway dies of thirst.

I have thought about hiring myself out. If you are suffering from severe flooding, I will move there and buy a boat. You are guaranteed to be gasping for water within days. If you are suffering from severe heat, I will move there and buy some sun tan lotion. You will soon forget what the sun looks like.

This latest strange sunny weather is caused by my old flooring. I wanted to break up the mountain of scrap timber into kindling, and I discovered that if it is damp, then the laminate peels off easily [it is, after all, extremely high quality flooring!]. So I put the whole lot into the garden to get damp.

And that is when the fine weather started.

If this goes on much longer, I may throw the floor into the pond and let it get damp that way.

Then we can get back to the miserable grey damp weather that we know and love so well.