There is indubitably one thing the British like to talk about and it is the weather. The reason is simple it's an easy ice breaker, it's a common fundamental of every day experience so everybody can talk about it and lastly it is completely unreliable. It was the great weatherman Michael Fish who in 1987 did his session after the news and said there would not be a hurricane. A concerned citizen had written in saying there would be, and the weather as though sensing pride before a fall dutifully and independently decided there would be a hurricane. Fish got it badly wrong. Winds of 110 miles per hour hit the South. It didn't effect Scotland by the way, and some Scots felt they had missed out because they usually get all the bad weather. Trees had fallen across every main road and every rail line. It was odd seeing so many fallen and rumour had it, were the Russians to start a nuclear war we were going to be gonners. Tree roots could be seen high in the air like an upturned dish unnaturally balancing on it's edge.. It took weeks to clear up afterwards. I am sure I took some pictures of the occasion when I was into photography. I'll have to see if I can find them. Poor Michael Fish though. I'm sure his standing as a weatherman toppled just as ignominiously as those trees did. It's generally taken for granted weather forecasters make predictions with caveats, because experience tells us they just can't help but to get it wrong. However, his hubris got the better of him. To make such an big wrong prediction because he had been challenged by an anonymous person was without doubt doubly humiliating. It don't matter if you predict a sunny day then it's overcast and rains, but to completely miss a hurricane is well off the scale. Pun intended. The weather is just unreliable.
Why then, when I know of this unreliability did I assume as in make an "ass" out of "u" and "me," spring was in the air. Maybe it's all to do with the isobars and the wind. The wind just can not be controlled, nor can the isobars either. For there had been a clear bout of very cold weather in January and in the back of my mind there was this hope. This wish. A wish which bordered on a prayer. A wish which was really no more than a wish without the genie, the weather had changed. We had come out of the long cold and snowy winter and the wish it was over. Spring would soon descend and make it milder. The temperature went up instead of the usual 2 or 3 degrees it was reaching between 8 and 11 degrees Celsius. Which after Scotland's very long cold winter felt like being in the Bahamas. It is interesting how the human body just adapts even to cold weather. How the internal central heating you have kicks in as more layers of clothing go on, scarves are tightly wrapped, vests put on and all food must be hot. After coming through this period of hard tortuous living there was this undeniable want and need which goes beyond all reason. The want to feel warmer and comfortable rather than constantly depressed with shortened days and bitter winds. It is the human condition, a euphemism we call "hope," and hope does not have any place for reality, unfortunately reality is true and very much in your face regardless of hope's desires. So I and I expect millions of other people in the UK had an immediate psychological quandary. Either moan and groan because it is unfair, and no matter what anyone says reality is unfair. Or quickly and appropriately just do your best to get over it. I so wish I could say "get over it" in a strong Scottish tongue, because it would sound a lot better than my wimpy English tongue. Anyway, to draw a longer conversation to a close. It's bloody cold again and I'm pissed off with it. I can hear those words now, ready... 1, 2, 3, ....."get over it."
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