Barely had the last scoop of topsoil been patted into place when the rain came. And in an unfathomable half hour, it destroyed both a fortnight’s work and what was left of our lockdown cheer. And all we could do was stand there, watching torrents of water lift up great clods of our newly harrowed field, transport them merrily over our equally new storm drain and then carve deep channels in the steep earth banks at the back of our house. Eventually the sky cleared, leaving us only the task of clearing tons of mud from the paving outside the kitchen, repairing the ruined slopes and reseeding the couple of acres we’d been readying for the arrival of the sheep. Such are the ways of life in rural Ireland. No biggie. But of course, said my friend, as I recounted the disaster over Zoom, Mercury’s in retrograde and it will be for a while. Brace yourself. And she was right. Until last weekend, when Mercury got its act together, disasters seemed to arrive like Tetris tiles. The boiler leaked oil and the element burnt out in the back-up immersion tank; a lightning strike took out the wifi; warning lights flickered on and off on the dashboard of the car. Finally, I found myself driving my partner to accident and emergency as he writhed in the throes of an agonising kidney stone. Being a rational sort, I don’t believe any of this nonsense; indeed, I don’t really know what a retrograde Mercury even is. And although I display some of the apparent attributes of the Taurean woman – stubborn, fond of a good dinner – I demonstrably lack the patience and practicality with which the sign is also associated. Except that last week, I discovered I might not be a Taurus in any case. Nasa, it was claimed, had thrown a spanner into the astrological works and introduced a new sign of the Zodiac. And to make way for Ophiuchus all the rams and bulls and archers and crabs had to shunt up. Hello, Aries! There was a certain weariness to Nasa’s response to the howls of outrage from seasoned sky-watchers. No, they said, they hadn’t changed the Zodiac, as they point out every time this story resurfaces. They were merely elaborating the finer details of the heavenly bodies. And furthermore, it was the Babylonians wot started it. Calm down, everyone: if you’re a Pisces, a Pisces you may remain. If you needed further confirmation, Russell Grant was on hand to explain the difference between the fixed, tropical Zodiac that forms the basis of western astrology and the more fluid, sidereal system. But why do we – or at least those of us who don’t seriously believe our fates to be determined by the movement of the stars – give stories like this house room? Boredom is perhaps the obvious answer; the diversion of getting exercised about something that we know doesn’t really matter, in a world where the things that do seem so terrifyingly beyond our control. A moment of frivolity, where you can pretend that chaos and predictability don’t lurk at the edges of our existence. And, for those of a certain vintage, a frisson of nostalgia, a return to the times when horoscopes were such big business that Float On, a 1977 song by the Floaters, in which men introduced themselves by their star sign before their name, could reach number one on both sides of the Atlantic. (“Libra and my name is Charles / Now I like a woman that’s quiet / A woman who carries herself like Miss Universe.”) Astrology is attractive because it takes some of the heat out of our battle with our personalities; it’s nice to think that your occasional selfishness or flash of temper is a result of astral manoeuvres rather than a lack of self-control or moral bottom. If you’re seeking confirmation that a relationship’s either flourishing or failing, star sign compatibility can be a useful addition to the decision-making process. It’s a way of outsourcing identity that has little validity, but even less comeback. Superstition makes fools of us all, but who cares? Who begrudges Johan Cruyff his lucky chewing gum, Heidi Klum her talismanic bag of baby teeth (her own, by the way), Charles Dickens his habit of facing north wherever he slept? Whose business is it if I always pack my Wu-Tang Clan coin when I go on my travels? There is, of course, a sensible answer to this: a ritual is fine as long as its presence or absence in your life is not a matter of anxiety or a barrier to doing what you want and need to do. If accidentally stepping on a crack in the pavement leads to a fear of leaving the house then a consultation with a therapist is probably in order. If our horoscopes truly determined with whom we chose to spend our lives or how we earned our livings, we might consider that we have a problem with taking responsibility for our actions and choices. But our selves can be troublesome to us, our motives and desires often obscured from view. We may act self-destructively or in ways that bring harm to others that we didn’t realise we wanted to inflict. In the current discourse, amplified by the pitiless to and fro of social media debate, much is made of our inner intentions and the consequences of our behaviour, but what is rarely discussed is how mysterious their contours and processes might be. To thine own self be true is a mantra well suited to narcissistic times, but it is easier said than done. How much easier to be true to a constellation. Mercury is now in forward motion and will remain so until October, the earth has dried out and the kidney stone banished. Even the boiler appears to be working again. Touch wood.