Irish weather

Dublin is incredibly cold at the moment, which has taken me by surprise again this year. Every October I'm braced for a cold Christmas and New Year but instead it's mild and pleasant. We wander around in spring coats and light jumpers – as it isn't exactly balmy either – looking forward to the summer that’s just around the corner.

Then a week ago the temperature plummeted overnight and we awoke to freezing fog that crept around the edges of the sky like frost forming on a windscreen, threatening to block out the already struggling Dublin sun. Drycleaners were deluged with winter coats claimed from the back of wardrobes and Pennys immediately sold out of one-size-fits-all gloves.

It's a well-known fact that the Irish winter and spring switched places sometime ago. I'm always lulled into a false sense of security though, like those flowers that bloom prematurely in February only to be flash frozen a month later. As I write this the fog has now eclipsed the sun and anything else past arms length. It's my friend Daisy's birthday in three weeks and it has been known to snow heavily around then; one year we sang Christmas songs with our taxi driver as we entered a courtyard of people throwing snowballs under the yellow streetlights.

Well it wouldn’t be Ireland if everything worked the way it should, including the the laws of nature.

Still feeling a little sore today but I don't want to fall behind, so I'm determined to at least finish the preparatory work as listed here.