RSS

Ballykillduff Weather

The Day the Weather Got Stuck

A Curious Incident in Ballykillduff
the weather stood still

1. A Most Peculiar Morning

On the morning of April the Somethingth, Ballykillduff awoke to what seemed like the perfect day.

No rain. No wind. No hailstones the size of gobstoppers. Just golden sunshine hanging lazily in the sky like someone had forgotten to take it in for the night.

Birds were mid-flap but not flapping. Leaves hung in the air without a twitch. A bee, somewhere near the churchyard, hovered next to a daisy like a paused film.

At first, no one noticed.

Then Nora O’Bannigan threw a ball for her dog, Waffles, and the ball floated in the air like a balloon with stage fright.

“That’s… not right,” she said.

Waffles whimpered and gently headbutted the ball, which wobbled, but did not fall.

2. The Realisation Sets In

By noon, it was obvious: the weather had stopped. Not gone wrong. Not gone wild. Just… stopped.

No clouds moved. The sun didn’t shift. It remained exactly 13.7 degrees Celsius all day long.

“I blame the ley lines,” muttered Farmer Doherty, examining a goat that had been mid-chew for two hours.

“It’s a meteorological traffic jam,” insisted the postman, who wore a different hat depending on how serious his theories were. Today’s hat had three feathers and a built-in weather vane.

Mrs McFadden went straight to her shed and emerged with an ancient book titled The Great Ballykillduff Almanac of Calamitous Possibilities.

“This happened once before,” she declared. “In 1782. The weather refused to move until someone climbed Ballykillduff Hill and sang to the sky in D-sharp.”

3. Operation: Unstick the Weather

By mid-afternoon, the village had entered emergency creative mode.

They divided into teams:

  • Team Wind: Attempted to re-blow the breeze using old accordion bellows and a modified vacuum cleaner.

  • Team Sun: Used shiny trays to reflect light around, hoping to confuse the sun into rotating again.

  • Team Rain: Held a dramatic reenactment of a thunderstorm using watering cans, frying pans, and one elderly man on a unicycle shouting “KABOOM!”

  • Team Sky Choir: Led by Miss Kavanagh from the school, who attempted to teach fifty villagers to harmonise in D-sharp while dangling from ladders.

Meanwhile, Councillor McGroggin organised a Cloud-Pulling Brigade. Dozens of children tied ropes around the unmoving clouds and heaved with all their might.

“Pull harder!” McGroggin cried. “We must jog the sky!”

Nothing worked.

By evening, the same sun still sat smugly overhead. Not one cloud had budged. Not one breeze had returned.

“We’re going to be stuck like this forever,” said little Nora, her plaits drooping with disappointment.

4. The Turning Point

As darkness refused to fall, the villagers gathered in silence on Ballykillduff Green. People looked weary. The sheep looked furious. One duck had taken to wearing sunglasses out of protest.

“I’ve got an idea,” said young Nora suddenly.

Everyone turned.

“Well,” she said, “we’ve tried everything sensible. Maybe we need to do something completely daft.”

She pointed to the church bell tower. “Let’s build a machine to ring the bell, play the D-sharp sky-song, fire umbrellas into the air, and launch Farmer Doherty’s goat into a cloud. At the same time.”

The village paused.

And then someone said, “Why not?”

5. The Contraption of Ballykillduff

The next 36 hours were glorious chaos.

They built a ridiculous, magnificent, terrifying contraption that included:

  • Bicycle-powered harmonium drones (for sky-singing)

  • A goat-powered pulley (which Farmer Doherty was oddly proud of)

  • Weather-themed fireworks filled with steam, glitter, and mint sauce

  • A trampoline made from old knicker elastic and a bouncy castle from the 2002 summer fête

  • Umbrellas on catapults

  • One chicken named Sally whose only job was to squawk at precisely the right moment

At exactly 12:00 noon two days later—still the same “day” in weather terms—they let it all rip.

The bell rang.

The song played.

Umbrellas soared.

The goat flew (briefly).

And at the peak of it all… Sally the Chicken squawked with the fury of ten orchestras.

There was silence.

Then the wind sighed.

The clouds shivered.

The sun wobbled.

And then… the rain fell. Just a little.

But it was enough.

6. A New Day

The next morning—an actual new morning—Ballykillduff awoke to find the world had resumed its spinning.

The birds flapped again. Trees swayed. A rainbow, slightly embarrassed by the delay, peeked out over the fields.

The villagers danced in puddles. The duck removed its sunglasses. Even the sun gave a polite nod of apology before setting properly at last.

“That,” said Councillor McGroggin, wiping glitter from his eyebrows, “was entirely unnecessary.”

“And absolutely perfect,” said Nora, now the town’s Honorary Weather Unsticker.

Sally the Chicken was given a medal.

Farmer Doherty’s goat was never the same again.

And so Ballykillduff returned to normal. Or at least as normal as a place like Ballykillduff ever gets.

 

Comments are closed.