Áilín Quinlan: Frazzled by a heatwave... how on earth will we cope with 38C?

She flew in from Massachusetts just as the temperatures shot into the late twenties.

My friend spent her first week in Cork being roundly congratulated by everyone she met for bringing the sunshine with her.

As temperatures nudged upwards into the thirties, the kudos tailed off; the novelty of some tropical heat didn’t last long.

Certainly not for me, especially after the upper half of my arm burned a crispy tomato red because I had the driver’s window open and my elbow out all the way back from Eyeries, where we’d gone to visit the Cailleach Bhéarra (the Hag of Beara), a trip we’d planned as part of the coursework my friend had to do for her college programme.

It started out well. The drive down under sparkling blue morning skies was nothing short of panoramic.

We found the site, which overlooks Coulagh Bay, and went through the little green gate and down the path to see the ancient monument, photograph it, and lay out our offerings alongside the shells, crystals, stones, weather-beaten coins, food, little dolls, carvings and bracelets arrayed on tiny natural shelves in the rock.

By the time we left, the heat had turned fiery. I didn’t realise quite how fierce, even though the car’s temperature gauge clearly said it was tipping 28 degrees Celsius.

I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t cop to how badly the arm was roasted ’til we hit Bantry, which is a fair distance from the Hag, but not like, as I complained later, hours or anything.

All the same, the damage was done, and by God, that arm was like a pig on a spit by the time we fell in the door of the Maritime to have our lunch.

So I’m definitive proof of what I read later was Gerry’s Law, named in honour, apparently, of the great Gerry Murphy. The law states that for every degree the Irish temperature rises over twenty degrees Celsius, our collective IQ drops by 1% – and our attention span by 3%.

I should have thought of the burn risk and pulled my arm in and rolled up the driver’s window. I didn’t, though, and by God was I sore for the next three days. Couldn’t lie on that side at night in bed, even.

We met an American couple at another stop on our Celtic mythology tour, the Drombeg stone circle outside Rosscarbery. They were delighted with the sunshine and the blue skies, viewing it as an unexpected bonus.

The woman, who revealed she had broken her leg the very day before they were due to fly to Ireland, was hopping around the uneven ground of Drombeg in some class of a special boot. You’ll pay dearly for that, I thought pessimistically, but then, maybe she was a descendant of those early Pioneer women who endured unbelievable hardships, doing everything from birthing children without help or hygiene, to running businesses and acting as bounty hunters.

Breaking a leg the day before a trip to Ireland was clearly something she could take in her stride, if you’ll excuse the pun.

On the way home, my friend entertained me with descriptions of life in a Massachusetts summer.

When she returns, she will have very hot, humid weather ’til September.

She will be unable to sleep properly.

She will have to have the air conditioning on all the time when she’s at home, which is expensive.

She will wake up with a headache every morning and will generally feel tired and lacking in energy all day.

Fearsome, I thought, and, having experienced something like that for less than a week, I offered to get her a 99, which was all she’d talked about on the way down to the Hag and back. But she demurred, explaining that if she started eating 99s, she’d never stop, and then she’d go home carrying an extra stone weight from 99s which would add to the heat-induced misery for the rest of her American summer.

Abstinence, thy name is woman.

On Sunday, I called into the shop. The woman at the cash desk and the long line of customers she was serving – all members of a local hiking group - were mightily relieved at the return of some crisp weather and the odd shower.

The cashier hadn’t been able to sleep, she said. She’d had no energy, she said. Hard to eat, she said. We all agreed.

We’re not made for it, long-term we said, though a happy medium would be nice.

“Can’t live with it, hate living without it,” somebody cracked as the hikers set off on their three-and-a-half hour walk. They cheered as the sky began to spit rain.

Someone talked about the scientist who has warned that if we were not by now absolutely “petrified” about the possibility of future climate-driven heatwaves, we haven’t been paying attention.

Later on in the day, I looked it all up. A new study published by the World Weather Attribution climate scientists says the temperatures reached here lately would have been impossible in the 1970s.

Places all over Ireland have either broken, or will soon break, their highest ever heat-stress levels, and by 2056, Ireland could routinely be hitting 38C.

Now that’s scary. No three-and-a-half hour walks in that.