Is the torture over? Maybe not. I still have the door open to the back garden. The shaky sense of climactically induced unease is still beating about my fragile psyche.<\/p>\n
By far the least significant downside to climate change is the irritation that \u201cIndian summers\u201d bring to those already unhappy enough with the conventional version of that season. We comprise multitudes. Yet the assumption remains that the entire citizenry relishes blazing heat and blasting sunlight.<\/p>\n
You see that in the responses from climate-change deniers to even the most responsible reporting on dangerously hot weather. \u201cBloody misery guts. In the olden days we\u2019d have a 99 and play a game of kickabout. Now a tiny bit of sun in this miserable grey country and it\u2019s the apocalypse.\u201d You know the sort.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the time has come again to stand up against the hot-is-good orthodoxy. Those who begin emails with \u201cHope you\u2019re enjoying the nice weather\u201d. Those who believe \u201cit\u2019s turned out nice again\u201d when you\u2019re having difficulty breathing. Speak for yourselves.<\/p>\n
In a less worrisome universe, we would, at this point in the calendar, be able to taunt such monsters with the end of their favoured season. Not until the clocks go forward again need we worry about where to keep our wallet when it gets too steamy to wear a jacket. Not until then will taking a bus remind us of Alec Guinness\u2019s experiences in that tin shack during Bridge on the River Kwai.<\/p>\n
This is now a delightfully diverse society. But many of us still have complexions suited to hiding from woolly mammoths in northern caves during the Pleistocene epoch. We turn pink upon hearing a bar of Walking on Sunshine. We react as equably to tropical climates as did Mr Kurtz in Heart of Darkness.<\/p>\n
And we are not yet able to welcome the end of it all. The sweaty backside of summer now remains exposed as the leaves begin to fall. Will we never be set free?<\/p>\n
Culture seems implicitly aware that autumn is a more attractive and complex season than summer. Did you know that the three best autumn films have \u201cheaven\u201d in the title? I\u2019m talking about Terrence Malick\u2019s Days of Heaven, from 1978 (Richard Gere and Brooke Adams harvest during magic hour), Douglas Sirk\u2019s All that Heaven Allows, from 1955 (posh Jane Wyman falls for gardener Rock Hudson), and Todd Haynes\u2019s Far from Heaven, from 2002 (posh Julianne Moore falls for gardener Dennis Haysbert).<\/p>\n
Okay, this is a bit of a cheat. As you can tell from the synopses, Haynes was paying tribute to the Sirk picture in his later masterpiece. But there is an unmistakable relish for the changing season in all three. The Sirk and the sub-Sirk film are both conspicuously aware that these months offer a russet analogy for changes that will turn the characters\u2019 lives upside down. Summer is good as metaphor for nothing other than the boredom of endless uniformity.<\/p>\n
It is equally revealing how many of the great summer films acknowledge the demerits of that season. Think of Steven Spielberg\u2019s Jaws, from 1975 (hordes of tourists provide its great white shark with ample dining options), Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Rear Window, from 1954 (Jimmy Stewart\u2019s injured photographer agonises in the heat of a New York summer), and Spike Lee\u2019s Do the Right Thing, from 1989 (blasting temperatures in the same city heighten racial tensions to violent breaking point). <\/p>\n
All three films make an enemy of the season musically eulogised as one of \u201csoda and pretzels and beer\u201d. It is not something into which you slip gently. It is something that nags, pesters and pokes. Treat it casually and you will get burnt. Relax your guard further and it might send you insane.<\/p>\n
Of course, even in the current changed circumstances, an Irish summer is unlikely to cause as much psychological mayhem as would one spent in Spike Lee\u2019s Bedford-Stuyvesant. I was in New York when Do the Right Thing was shot \u2013 Public Enemy\u2019s Rebel Without a Pause on every boom box \u2013 and, though the weather was utterly beastly, I was surprised and relieved to discover that few New Yorkers thought otherwise. <\/p>\n
If someone said \u201cnasty weather today\u201d they were rarely speaking of unseasonal downpours; they were more often objecting to heat and humidity. Nobody forced you to sit outside before dusk. Nobody put on that offended expression if you admitted to wishing for the unthreateningly overcast days of mid-September.<\/p>\n
If we could somehow meld the New Yorker\u2019s attitude to summer with what used to be the Irish version of that inconvenient season then the country would (for my team, anyway) become an infinitely less irritating place to dwell.<\/p>\n
Anyway, it will soon be over for another eight months. Or will it? Tell me we\u2019re nearly there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the torture over? Maybe not. I still have the door open to the back garden. The shaky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[254106,42401,2885,93,61,60,264729,41881,68825,216004,6821,18586,57376,264728],"class_list":["post-623377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alec-guinness","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-climate-change","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-stewart","tag-julianne-moore","tag-richard-gere","tag-rock-hudson","tag-spike-lee","tag-steven-spielberg","tag-terrence-malick","tag-todd-haynes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}