Well, yes this greeting is a bit late but just wanted to be different. And I thought I’d start (!) the year by commenting on the nation’s favourite topic – the weather. Generally speaking it is the opening gambit in many a conversation. But why?
For starters I think we talk about it so often because it is so unpredictable, and I suspect because of the geography and size of our British Isles it may well be the only place on earth with quite so varied weather patterns. So when we meet someone in the street we can say ‘it’s gone very cold again’, or ‘isn’t it mild for January’ and ‘great weather for ducks!’ I’m sure you can all think of plenty more stock phrases like these.
Then there are the unusual extremes of weather we can get. In 2010 we had two of the hardest winters probably ‘since records began’. (Have you noticed how news presenters love to say this!) This of course gives everyone plenty to talk about, or more like whinge about – ‘why there’s not enough salt, grit?’ etc etc. (I do think it’s a bit unreasonable when some people blithely quote ‘they have snow but manage to carry on as normal’ about other countries. Of course they do because they KNOW IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN so not surprisingly they can prepare for it and are used to it!)
Which leads neatly
to my final thought on this subject (for today at least). Oh what fun we can have when the weather forecasters get it wrong. It’s more than 20 years ago but we still hark back to Michael Fish when he patronisingly assured a viewer that no hurricane was on its way. Since then he has tried to make out his words were taken out of context - apparently he was referring to Florida. Unfortunately for him it matters not if this is true because for Jill & Jo Public watching the forecast on TV he got it well & truly wrong!Les X
PS This year’s resolution – to write something in this blog once a month. Don’t hold your breath!
