So long, salad days: Please can we have our heatwave back?

And so, after about five weeks – socks. I couldn’t believe it. They felt so strange on my feet. And unnecessary - ’til I took them off again...

Then I suddenly found I didn’t mind the feel of socks on my feet. The Omega Block had headed for other, luckier, climes after some glorious sunny weeks, and it was back to the chill reality of May in Ireland.

Ah, to be honest: I really must admit it. I hadn’t the first clue about the Omega Block weather pattern and its meteorological effects until it had gone.

In full mourning, I consulted Met Eireann to see whether this was really and truly the end of living on the Costa del Corcaigh.

Those fabulous weeks, when we sat around smirking at the plonkers who’d spent a fortune on spring breaks in Malaga while the rest of us got to swim in our own sea and tan ourselves in our own back gardens for next to nothing, were all due, I discovered, to a blocking area of high pressure over Ireland.

Blocking areas, I learned, are high pressure weather fronts that just sort of sit there in the way of everything else, forcing all the bad weather to squeeze around them and land on top of neighbouring countries.

This one was called an Omega Block because the jet stream had made a pattern that resembled the Greek letter omega.

But you probably already saw all this on the telly.

My point is that once the Omega Block departed and the socks came back, I had to face the fridge.

In the state of high delirium occasioned by an outstanding month or more of Greek-island mornings, lunchtime basking sessions, and Mediterranean evenings - where you could actually plan a barbecue more than three hours ahead, eat it without wearing a fleece or holding an umbrella and then actually remain outside ’til after 8pm without a second fleece and a pair of lined leggings - I had forgotten the fridge.

Then the chickens came home to roost, and I reaped what I sowed.

The fridge was in a pathetic state.

A jar of harissa paste and another of red pesto had been knocked over, and thin liquids had dripped through the lids, spreading all over the glass shelves and down the back and side walls. Where they dried. Into hard trails.

Something had also happened to a bottle of bought dressing (shame, oh shame) which had been quietly leaking for days. Or a week. Who knows? At the time, I was far too drunk on sunshine and Lyric FM to notice. Now it was time to face the music.

The festive mountains of colour that had spilled from every shelf of that fridge for weeks; lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, celery, fragrant bunches of basil and cartons of radishes, were, alas, no more.

In their place sat two trays of withered parsnips, a stray tomato sporting patches of white fungus, a bunch of curling celery, and some sizable bags of dried-up carrots. Two leftover boiled eggs seethed in a bowl.

There was a rank smell around the interior that I initially couldn’t identify, and eventually concluded was spilled vinegar from the half-finished jar of pickled onions. It took a while and a lot of hot water and much swearing. Enough said.

The thing was, in other ways I had been so, so good.

I had kept up with the laundry during the heatwave because, being Irish, it was just so utterly amazing to sit out and watch sheets and towels and the few little bits of shorts and tee-shirts and things sizzling from wet to crisp on the line right in front of your eyes.

For the first time in my life, there was never much more in the basket than a couple of tea-towels. It was great.

Nothing had really been spilled on the kitchen floor because minimal cooking was being done, and anyway, with all that sunshine streaming in, you couldn’t but notice if it was showing neglect in places; a quick once-over with the mop and, hey presto, the tiles were bone-dry and shining in minutes. As was the mop. Dry as a bone again almost immediately.

The hoovering was non-existent because, of course, with nobody staying inside for longer than it takes to flap a hand in front of your face, there were no crisp crumbs or bits of microwave popcorn being dropped under the armchairs or the sofa or, indeed, all over the floor in front of the TV.

The shopping was a doddle. Salad vegetables. Stuff you could grill like chicken breast, steaks, burgers. Sourdough pizza with a base sauce from a jar and a few toppings.

Oh My God. Omega it was indeed, for a few weeks there.

We didn’t know how good we had it.

Well, really, we mostly did, and when one person said to me they were half glad the sun had taken a bit of a hike because, in fairness, a person could only take so much of the heat, and look at the state of the lawn and the problems the drought was making for the farmers, I nodded and smiled and felt like busting a bucket over their head.

The good news is that the Omega Block is possibly only having a bit of a sulk.

We’ll be back to the shorts and the sandcastles in no time.