Weather vain?

It’s often said if you want to engage anyone from the United Kingdom in conversation – and we are notoriously standoffish – then simply ask them about “This weather”.  It’s true. In Britain we love to talk about the weather.

But I would suggest it goes deeper than that.

Dear world, we the British love to complain about the weather… 

Now, take this summer, which is now drawing to a close. Not a bad one by recent ones. We’ve had many sunny days, warm ones and few wet days. Wimbledon finished as scheduled, only one of the Ashes cricket matches didn’t play out (and as England were facing defeat at the time…). Young Prince George was late on parade, but, to the best of my knowledge, atmospheric conditions were not to blame.

But ask anyone in the UK “What about this weather?” you’ll be told “Ooh, it’s too hot” or “It’s not going to last”.  Move forward a few months to wintertime and it will be “too cold” and “I don’t think it’s ever going to brighten up”.

The thing is with the British weather is it lacks extremes. It’s usually mild. Famously it does rain, but not for weeks on end.  Storms can be disruptive but rarely destructive. Sometimes, rivers & reservoirs dry up – but that’s usually attributable to bad decisions by the water companies. And for those hankering for heavy fog in the Sherlock Holmes style, they’re no more you may be sorry to hear.

Bearing in mind we are an island, sitting as we do surrounded by water on all sides, and about 3/5^th up the northern hemisphere, we get what’s due to us.  But for some reason, unless the summer skies are blindingly light like in an old Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial, or unless we’re under six foot of snow November through March… well it’s as if we’re being cheated out of something. (At some date I’ll talk over the British winter with you).

Oh, another British habit is this. We love to mix and match our measurement systems to suit. We drive our cars at miles per hour, and then fill them with litres of fuel. And this is true of the temperature too. The hottest days are those approaching one-hundred Fahrenheit, the colder being noted as those going under zero Celsius, again all designed to fit our requirement to needing to have reason to complain.

 

Please World, By all means then feel free to ask any of us what we think about the weather.

But you might have to brace yourself for the verbal storm that follows.

 

 I can only apologise.