Rain. This is what this country means to me: cold, grey, drizzly, dreary. Wet feet, the smell of damp clothes, pervading the island with the insistence of an invasive species, so embedded in the ecosystem as to be a condition of existence. Rain invades the island, making its home here, occupying the land. Eroding the populace with the same unwavering persistence as it does the landscape, chiselling small divots into the surface, wearing it away bit by bit until, at last, the substrate gives way. “You’d be glad of the rain” is perhaps the most criminal of statements to be heard on the rare occasions when the presence of sunshine extends beyond a week—a sentiment born of wishing for nothing more than to be submerged once more in the muggy gloom and spitting rain that hangs over the island like a plague. And the people, their grey faces downcast, looking at their shoes; shuffling mechanically back and forth through the streets—to work, to the pub, and home again. Shuffling like robots. Day in, day out, they repeat the cycle, dripping their way across pavement, carpet and hallway. In Ireland, water drips incessantly like background radiation. Dripping from gutters, cars, windowsills, wet clothes, and noses of people—people moulded by the damp, oppressive atmosphere, crippled by joint pain, and wheezing with one of many lung disorders common to the island. People who carry the rain inside them wherever they go, until even their thoughts begin to mildew—until there are no thoughts left that are not damp. Until all their thoughts are completely saturated, soaked through and washed away, leaving only rain thoughts and thoughts of rain. Until it lives inside them; follows them, trailing their every step. The rain, to its credit, gives them something concrete to grumble about, an intractable nemesis to colonize their thoughts and occupy all that dangerous space; in its absence, one must cast about for something—anything at all—to grumble about, only to find oneself, deep down, relieved when the deluge recommences, relieved by that strange comfort of a familiar enemy. Brooding by windows; lying alone in bed—telling the rain everything they can’t tell themselves. It’s easy to not think when it’s raining. It is for this reason that those who enjoy the rain, or who dare to take comfort in its perpetual hum, are unfailingly met with ridicule and contempt. There is a purity to a hatred of this kind. He who has no bitter words for the rain has no reason to avoid thinking, nothing to not think about. Such a person is treated with the height of suspicion, labeled a dissident in advance. Any person at home in the rain is at peace with themselves, at peace with their thoughts, and therefore a deviant of the highest order: unperturbed as the water slowly seeps through their clothing, taking it in their stride, squelching through every step, untroubled. In Ireland, thinking is a crime punished swiftly and with the utmost severity: grumble to your heart’s content, but never follow a grievance to its source. Not even a little. Especially not a little. To follow it even a little is already too much. To follow it to its logical conclusion is explicitly prohibited: to think past the rain, past the dripping coats and sodden pavements, is already to have gone too far. Past the rain itself, into the places it was hired to obscure. Far better to complain. Indeed, far better to think about the rain—to gripe, moan and grumble about its omnipresence, between wheezes, sneezes and drips, as one shuffles back and forth between home, office and pub. Rivulets of water cascade across window and windscreen, washing away any potential meanderings of thought; all focus, once again, redirected to the immediacy of the downpour. For them the rain has always been here. Always will be here; internalised as reality itself, and what is internalised as reality must be obeyed. If it is carried inside, it must be loved; if it is loved, it is only as something to be hated correctly. And this hatred is enforced. And so they hate those who love the rain: those who do not carry it inside them, whose thoughts are not damp or mildewed. One can always count on the rain. It covers a multitude of sins.