Thunderstorms rove, maraudering nerves; Caoimhe’s dog howls dolorously all day. The weather isn't all storms. There are long stretches of sunshine, during which I am useless. My sunglasses feel like bricks atop my head. I can’t wear rings, the flesh swells so. One’s ambition flails; it’s a victory if I wash the dishes. According to biometereologists, the change in pressure brought on by storms is thought to produce electrical and chemical changes in the brain, causing headaches. Moreover, the amount of oxygen in the air is reduced, inducing drowsiness.

So my activities have been limited to office correspondence and sitting on the steps of the pre-fab office, reading in the sunshine while inky clouds loom above the mountain. I was reminded of The Neverending Story, which I had loved as a child for its scenes of eternal childhood alternating with the Nothing's menace, which made itself known through the presence of swiftly gathering dark clouds. Looking at the minatory horizon, I'd stir from my languour, feeling deliciously on the precipice of danger, though nothing would happen for hours. As a child I didn’t know what the Nothing itself was, but I knew what happened when the Nothing arrived: death, the death of friendship, of imagination, of all living creatures, the end of everything.

When the thunder comes, though, only the landscape changes: the everyday is transformed into something more fantastic, the houses and fields and even the barking of dogs more surreal for the extraordinary booming in the background. Giants battle and glaciers break unseen amidst occasional flashes of lightning, which never appear in front of you as hard as you look, but in the periphery of your vision, as if trying to conceal itself.

Lightning did hit the roof of my ex-landlady’s house in Co. Clare, setting it on fire. I found out when the ex-husband emailed me a link to a news story, with no other message (thank god). By now much that linked us had vanished, or died, or burned down. The story mentioned that one person was seen being comforted by neighbours; I imagine J., tiny, freckled, with short red hair, her face contorted by sorrow and fear.

If this had happened 18 years ago, when I had lived above J’s garage my first summer in Ireland, her four young children would have been present, huddled around her. I remember that summer keenly: a summer of cycling to and from the village under the Milky Way, hiking up limestone mountains and walking green roads, or traipsing down to the beach just a stone’s throw away, to watch J's children luring crabs at the bridge with sausage encased in tights tied to sticks.

Most summers are the same, but that summer was extraordinary. It had seemed then an eternal summer, a summer of discovering this new country. I was still in love with the ex; I still thought we’d be together for the rest of our lives, despite our troubles. When that summer, that eternal summer, passed, it felt like the end of everything. Only it was that whatever spell I had been under had broken; there is no Nothing where friendship and imagination thrive.

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