His tone was one that brooked no argument. Years ago it had worked a charm at immediately bringing the household to a silent pause, unpaused only when the meteorologist gladdened, or more often broke, his heart with news of the expected weather. In recent years, however, it had become ultimately ineffective against the babble (he’d given up tuning in, so couldn’t say whether it was friendly conversation or argument) of his three children.
“What’s wrong with companionable silence?” he thought to himself as the familiar theme tune jingled its way from the television set to his ears.
“Good afternoon, and thanks for joining me for your weekly farming forecast,” forecaster Evelyn Cusack began.
“The past week saw more rainfall than average for this time of year,” the familiar voice continued.
“You don’t have to remind me,” Jim thought, shaking his head at the thoughts of the mowing he’d done on Tuesday that had been promptly followed by showers as heavy as he’d seen last winter.
As the forecaster stepped from one side of the map of Ireland behind her to the other, Jim recognised that her reflections on the weather that had gone before were being wrapped up, and the important bit - what was to be expected next week - was on the way.
“Shush,” he bellowed, to no avail.
Not able to hear exactly what weather he could expect, Jim leaned forward to see if the charts Evelyn was summoning to the screen as if by magic could fill in the gaps. He thought it suggested the rain might hold off until Tuesday night, and so let him get the top field mowed and picked up before then, but without the glasses he could never find he couldn’t say for sure.
“...heavy showers,” Evelyn concluded. “Good afternoon.”
And it was over.
“What heavy showers?” Jim panicked. “When?”
“Three Goddamn minutes, is that too much to ask for?” Jim shouted. “Three minutes for a bit of help from Met Eireann so I can keep doing my level best to keep this farm from going under and keep you in the style you’ve become accustomed to. Sure for all I got from that forecast I would have been as well going out and asking the dog what he thinks. I may as well toss a coin to decide when to mow now.”
“Just rewind it Dad,” Clodagh, the six-year-old apple of Jim’s eye, suggested innocently.
“I can’t rewind it, silly billy,” Jim said, softening a little. “It wasn’t a recording, it was today’s weather.”
“That doesn’t matter, you can rewind it. You can even go right back to the beginning of it if you like,” Clodagh insisted, skipping over to the collection of remotes on the coffee table and taking control of them with all the confidence of her young years.
A few button presses later, and Evelyn was once more bidding Jim a good afternoon and thanking him for joining her for the forecast.
An old dog, Jim had as much chance of learning how to time travel back to the start of the forecast himself as he had of figuring out how to do what his little girl had just done.
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