Heavy weather

We Brits love to talk about the weather. In conversation, in the news. I have three different weather apps so that I can be fully briefed on the various options (what I actually do is keep looking around until I find the best weather and decide that this is what’s going to happen today).

This week the UK finds itself in the grip of a heatwave – which is to say that it’s warm in London. If it doesn’t happen in London it doesn’t really happen at all. It’s understandable, it’s where all the important people and journalists are.

The basic rule is that weather can be used as a greeting, and it should never be contradicted. ‘Lovely day, eh?’ ‘Yes.’ Any other response would be seen as dangerous and provocative.

The rule about weather reporting in the news is that it is unhinged and totally contradictory. There will have been stories for months about the unseasonable cold or the lack of rain, but heat and precipitation are a disaster. Usually one that no one was prepared for. The change in weather also follows strict patterns, with an atmosphere built up by headlines such as ‘experts warn of rain travel chaos’, or ‘heatwave could kill thousands experts warn’. There’s a whole industry of warning experts, like the prophets and soothsayers of old.

I for one shall be enjoying the weather, right up until it does something I don’t like.