YE GODS

Many moons ago, when I worked on a daily news­pa­per in Britain we had an un­pre­dicted, pro­longed, crop-wilt­ing, knee-buck­ling drought and heat­wave. It was in an age of cli­mate ig­no­rance when con­se­quences may have been on the hori­zon but no­body ex­cept some ded­i­cated, ig­nored sci­en­tists were pay­ing at­ten­tion.

Weather fore­cast­ing seemed no more re­li­able than hold­ing a wet fin­ger in the air. There was no un­reg­u­lated new media mad­ness then, just the now crit­i­cally un­der­val­ued skill of ded­i­cated qual­i­fied jour­nal­ists who hunt re­lent­lessly for the truth, get into the de­tail, have fin­gers on the pulse and who eu­phemisti­cally hold politi­cians’ feet to the fire. (Keep going jour­nal­ists every­where, for you are needed more than ever. And stay well clear from the dark­en­ing shadow of the word media).

We worked for days piec­ing to­gether per­sonal sto­ries of the des­per­ate con­se­quences of the drought. Then we went for it, ban­ner head­line, pages of de­tail and ad­vice, the lot. I drove under a clear night sky to the print­ing press, checked the final proofs, gave the thumbs up and the vast state-of-the-press worked up a head of steam. It was al­ways mo­men­tous, our en­deav­ours man­i­fest.

I had a chat with col­leagues then stepped out­side to breathe. I looked up and felt rain­drops on my face. Piles of wet news­pa­pers were dropped off at newsagents that morn­ing. The teenagers doing cycle de­liv­er­ies wore bin lin­ers to stay dry.

I tell you this just in case my ac­count of our cur­rent dire sit­u­a­tion at home in The Pri­o­rat and a host of other places stirs the gods once again into hurl­ing some thun­der­bolts at me.

With the loss of our pre­vi­ously flour­ish­ing well and spring we have just en­listed the help of a renowned water di­viner, sought per­mis­sions and then spent €8,000 on a new 85 metre well. It has not worked. We in no way blame the di­viner. There is water, just pre­cious lit­tle. Now we are going to have a 700 metre trench dug and a pipe laid to link into the vil­lage sup­ply. That will cost a few thou­sand more.

Mean­while the vil­lage and our coun­cil and our friends sus­tain us. They have al­ways been be­yond won­der­ful. We have al­ways been weaved in. We have water de­liv­er­ies al­most weekly and have rigged up a sys­tem of pumps. We mon­i­tor fore­casts. Hopes and clouds con­tinue to evap­o­rate. We can­not water the olive trees, un­der­stand­ably, so we are going to have a hor­ri­ble har­vest. And then there is the bad dream that is wild­fire, stalk­ing all of Cat­alo­nia and the world.

We will sur­vive. We must live the day and tread as softly as we can, heed­ing the truth-say­ers, learn­ing, while keep­ing life in this val­ley in vital per­spec­tive. I would rather be here than any­where else in our col­lec­tive cri­sis.

Is it tonight they are giv­ing jota dance classes in the vil­lage hall on the eve of festa?