Bad Weather

• A Match to the Heart: One Woman’s Story of Being Struck by Lightning by Gretel Ehrlich
  Fourth Estate, 200 pp, £9.99, February 1995, ISBN 1 85702 293 9

My mother’s return from Galway some while ago was delayed because things got very stormy in Oughterard. I had known there was a chance she might run into difficulties sorting through her uncle’s belongings; possibly there were disputes among the friends and neighbours who had always taken a keen interest in his affairs, or some unpleasantness about my great-uncle’s will that needed to be smoothed away. I mentioned it to my sister. ‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s a storm – you know – weather.’