The British Weather – A Survivor’s Guide

Of course, if you are buttering your baguette in a force-nine gale or having to bale out your shoes with your teacup, in between having to fetch your book or newspaper back from across the other side of the garden, then you must have been tempted outside. However briefly you were tempted out by the appearance of that yellow thing in the sky for the first time in what seems like decades, you will have forgotten one of the basic rules of life in Britain.

The rule is: no matter how nice it looks outside – it isn’t.

It is either – on those few days when the drizzle stops long enough for the clouds to part – sunny but cold, or – unbelievably – sunny and hot. Such is the cunning nature of the British weather; neither of these conditions can be detected from indoors. Only when you get out there, do you realise those two things that you can see rolling towards the kitchen drain used to live – quite happily - in your underpants, or that rivulet of dampness also heading towards the kitchen drain is you… melting.

Occasionally, on about 3 days out of the 365 the temperature outside is just right – that is if the wind has temporarily dropped below gale force – for sitting outside. Unfortunately, if it is nice enough for you it will be nice enough for your neighbours to get out their power mower, their radio and their barbecue too… oh, and their drink. So they will be singing crazily at the tops of their voices to the latest Eurovision hits while one manically and drunkenly mows everything on a vaguely horizontal surface while the other sets fire to a wide variety of foodstuff. All right by the fence where you placed your garden chair to keep out of the gale… and the rain… or, if it is summer, the snow.

If you are British, if you grew up here – oddly enough during a childhood of eternal summers – then you will - by instinct – know not to trust the outside. It is a dangerous, insidious and mendacious con-trick perpetuated by a cruel alliance between the weather system and the insect population in order to make everyone’s life a misery.