"This reader in South Dublin wants you to launch a national campaign to banish Aeolus. The God of the Winds has been particularly unkind this Spring to both garden and bird-lovers in this area by sending almost continuous east and north-east winds. Don't mention my name." He says, to back up his case, that the hardy, well-established shrubs in his shore-side garden have been completely defoliated (yes, completely defoliated) by the searing, salt-laden winds over at least 14 days. Up to this April, nine days of uninterrupted easterly wind was the longest period he knew over nearly 20 years of living on the edge of the sea. Decorative apple trees suffered and even fuchsia, which defiantly resists the west winds everywhere in Connemara, fell victim to the wrath of Aeolus in eastern Ireland. Same with forsythia. And salt had to be scraped from the windows. More, paint dropped off house walls like leaves in autumn. While there may be some delight, he writes, in watching half-a-dozen species of seabirds wading together at the bottom of the garden, and listening to the Brent geese quacking, while he lies in bed, watching them through binoculars, he believes, without claiming qualifications on the subject, that the east wind at this time of year drives the flies inland. This has the effect of making the swallows and swifts fly on to inland places and avoid staying around the coast.
Well, the rest of us might say to him, there you are with lovely seabirds around you, the salt wind in your face, the water to dip into when the weather is good. Count your blessings. To have even fuchsia defoliated is surely something to bring out sympathy, but won't the leaves and flowers come again, when the weather improves? Of course they will, and in their second coming, in more temperate weather, will be more luxuriant than the first crop. And all the time, as you wait, you have those lovely views of Howth head and the Red Rocks. In fact, a seaside house on the edge of Dublin Bay must be in the highest brackets of those properties illustrated every Thursday in this newspaper. But anyone with chest complaints will share his feelings about the east wind.
Quixotic, the winds are, according to Lewis Carroll. "But the principal failing occurred in the sailing/And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed/Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,/That the ship should not travel due West."