Always light after the dark. Three weeks ago I gave up believing it was July into August. We just whispered condolences every day at 6 am and hoped for the best. Accepting it was going to be another March or November day parading as a summer day in sheep's clothing. But there looks to be a chink on the horizon. Dry weather and temps back to normal 22-24 degrees for this time of year in the Netherlands.
The poor solar garden lights don't know what is going on. There's been rumour of a garden revolution and the whole household been overthrown by a bunch of LED solar bulbs if things don't pick up soon. Last week the garden lights went on strike for two whole days in protest about there being no sustained sunshine for more than 20 minutes at a time.
We've been accosted by October slugs on the pavement after dark claiming their garden work contracts have been violated and that they only 'came out' because they assumed it was Sept/Oct. Last week, a large summer moth died on our hallway floor. He/she just gave up the will to live.
We have a 350 litre water rain barrel in our back garden that captures all the rain from the roof through pipes I fitted three years ago. We've had to empty and drain it twice in the last 2 days! No math degree required - that's 700 litres of water in 48 hours.
We haven't seen a neighbourhood cat in four days. They don't do water. They are an unruly Boss Cat mob you don't mess with. But we miss Tuxy (+Mini Tuxy), Tiger (Ginger and Mini), Teddybear and even fuckin' nasty ratface, the trouble maker, from the street up and Co.
The wife, Erica, had to order online support for some plants and our hanging flower baskets. We all need counselling and support in this crazy weather - physically and mentally!
Don't get me started on our little birdies in the garden. In this wind and rain, they don't fly from their nesting points - just a few pigeons. Our trio of parkettes couples have long vacated the surrounding trees, heading back to Amsterdam or mor likely called it quits for this summer and headed back south to warmer climates in France and Italy. They often stayed as late as October before closing the nests and packing the suitcases!
The garden summer furniture remains in the shed. We're giving it a pass this year. Normally it comes out late May to June, but practical and personal circumstances prevented that. Now, after an atrocious July, it ain't worth the bother of hauling out and assembling - for what? A week or two in August of good weather. Not worth the bother. Sad, but hello 2024 when we will see you again.
It's odd. I'm at that stage when I just want to park summer 2023. Just move on. I haven't experienced that before - at least this early. Not sure how everyone else feels. I just want to quickly get out of this summer, through Autumn, and on to winter and December. The weeks can't come soon enough.
Maybe it is because Erica and I have known for the past couple of months that we were going back to visit Ireland from December. Home as I insist in calling it, still. I often wonder do all Irish men and women do this when they live for very extended periods away from Ireland. Do you still refer to it as home? I've many friends from places like Nigeria, Morocco, UK, Denmark, USA, Sri Lanka... but they don't seem to refer to them as places they 'go home to'.
For the hundredth time... this week, I was asked that same question. ''When will you come home - will you ever come home?'' My position hasn't changed in 11 years. NO. Would we both like to? Of course. But for many reasons that is simply not viable now. Yes, the economics of life are better here in the Netherlands, but increasingly, like everywhere in Europe, not by much as it was when I first moved here. But the quality of life and infrastructure here is not something we would easily give up.
Ireland, as a nation, has a very considerable long way to go to woo its ex-pats back. A considerable way in reality. That isn't a problem for us (abroad), to fix it... it's a problem for the people and families in Ireland with ex-pats living abroad and the decisions Irish people make when they vote for progressive governments.
After 11 years, the Dutch government has never impacted on my qualities and values of life. The morals I hold dear. I simply cannot say that for the 1980s and 1990s I lived in Ireland. Ireland is, and remains, a nation that behaves like an petulant teenager being reluctantly dragged into the modern age. A nation trapped in a rural versus city dichotomy, and a struggle to see which on rules.
There remains a hardcore of people, many I grew up with in school, who want to live the lives of their mothers and fathers from the 1950s and 1960s. And they will do anything to take us back to that bygone era whether we like it or not, so long as they can take comfort and refuge in those memories. They have absolutely no interest in change or the future. They are all about the past. History turns their hands cold with a firm grip. I've little time for that.
And, sadly, in Ireland, all I see now is far right groups exploit that old-age vulnerability and insecurity as a way to develop a new younger generation with fear of the future, an adversity to science and education, accurate information, and anything seen as a challenge to the moral age-old agenda .
You live where you are happiest. Do I want to live in a country where many people don't seem to be happy, loudest voices are heard, vote for something in a majority they later claim they did not want. They don't like FF. They don't like FG. They don't SF. They don't like the Greens, They don't like Labour or the socialist left.
It's like taking a child to McDonald's because they asked, but then refuse everything on the menu!
There's a lot of work that still needs to be done in Ireland. No nation is perfect.
The birds and the cats watching them will return to my garden in the coming days. The weather has just been bad.
Nothing to see here... unless you really want to see it.
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