Always take the weather

Once again, the sole topic of conversation at my local supermarket this morning was the weather. As befits my role as someone who has effectively retired from full time work, albeit short of bus pass eligibility, I felt obliged to join in.

“It’s cold today!’
“Yes.”

And that was pretty well it. With the temperature hovering around freezing point, I felt it necessary to wear two layers of clothing; a T shirt and a warm top. People around me, having parked in the Asda car park, seemed to resemble Nanook of the North. I was half-expecting to see a freezing group of pensioners looking at a hole in the ice, trying to catch fish.

This is what the Daily Express refers to as a ‘temperature death plunge’ or something similarly serious. Today’s ‘arctic blast’ did not seem to have persuaded younger shoppers to dispense with their shorts and T shirts.

Inside Asda, things were no better. “It’s cold in here,” said one lady, as she stood next to the cold meats. I was tempted to ask what she expected when standing next to a long refrigerator: a sauna? And wherever I went, I found myself listening to conversations about the weather and the temperature. “It’s the coldest winter I have ever known,” mumbled one surly gentleman, as made my way through the reduced items section, which would surely come as a surprise to employees of the Met Office who have been advising us for some time that this has been the mildest (and wettest) winter in living memory. But bit of ice on the car windscreen means that we are about to endure temperatures normally expected in Greenland. “It’s only one degree. It’s freezing.”

Things were even worse by the time I reached the tills.

“The weather man on the BBC says there’s snow on the way, could be a few inches by the morning.”
“Yes, there has been a severe weather warning.”

All this proves that the weather is much worse than it used to be. When I was growing up and weathermen had names like Bert, Jack and Bill, and there were no such things as ‘severe weather warnings’. They would just tell you, with varying degrees of accuracy, what they felt the weather would be like. Basically, it was either good weather or bad weather. Anyway, you would get a cheery smile at the end of the forecast and forget all about it. Now, ‘severe weather warnings’ are almost a daily event.

“The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for wind. It’s going to be windy today. What this means is your hat might blow off. Stay indoors and keep watching telly for more news.”

By the next day, the wind has all gone, a chair in the garden has blown over during the night and you say to yourself, “Hmm. That Carol was right. She said there would be severe weather and now I have got to stand that chair back up again. Oh no. The bird box is at an angle too. Bloody severe weather warnings.”

I would describe today as ‘a bit cold’. The car managed to start, second time, and I managed to clean my car windscreen with a jug of cold tap water in a heartbeat. We are not snowed in on account of the fact it isn’t snowing and we have not frozen to death, not yet anyway.

Anyway, I take these hysterical weather warnings with a huge pinch of salt, but not everyone does. Imagine you are a very elderly person, living alone in a draughty old house with insufficient funds to keep warm and then some suit comes on and tells you the weather will be severe. Or if you are daft enough to believe a word the Express says, you fall for their ‘Arctic blast’ nonsense. It will make you worried and most of the time there is no need to be worried.

It’s winter and it’s quite cold. We live in a maritime climate and most of the time the weather is changeable, which is a technical term for crap. And guess what? It always has been.

A ‘severe weather warning’ means the weather will be a bit more crap than usual. Nothing worse than that. Let’s talk about the weather, by all means, but weather is all that it is.