Y’know, this country barely does summer. Most of the time, the season is noted by slightly warmer rain. Then we get a rare heat wave, some azure blue sky with a dazzling yellow orb and heat, heat, glorious, lovely heat and what happens? Some grumpy malcontent moans about it.
Now that summer appears to have finally arrived, can I strike a dissonant chord by suggesting that it goes away again? No?
No! Piss off already. I put up with enough dreadful weather on these wind lashed, rain soaked islands as it is, so a few days (weeks even, yes, please) of sunshine is a blessed relief and something to be savoured before normality resumes and those droughts of early spring come back.
Just for once can we enjoy the moment without some grump complaining and moaning about it being too hot? It is not too hot. It is pleasantly warm and about bloody time, too.
…but I’m at a loss when it comes to discussing the heat, because everyone else seems to like it and I really don’t. Furthermore, while I’m resigned to nodding along in pretend agreement about “the lovely weather” if it’s soaring away in the high 20s in August, I’m damned if I’m going to go down without a fight in May. This weather doesn’t belong here.
Yes, it does – it’s that Gulf Stream thingy out in the Atlantic sweeping all that warm air over us – and 20 odd degrees is not hot, it is warm. And if you don’t like it, then you understand how some of us feel for the rest of the year. So, please, put a sock in it and don’t complain to me about it being too hot. I get hay fever too, but I take the anti-histamines and get on with enjoying the few warm days that we do get. With luck, we will get another 1976 – well, I can hope…
I don’t really want another 1976 because we are seriously short of water in the south east and I don’t fancy collecting the stuff from standpipes, apart from that I entirely agree, so do the cats.
Ah, you’re just being a wimp 😉
My Siamese loves it – the hotter the better, as far as he’s concerned! Don’t know if the kittens will agree, but it is supposed to be a breed trait.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be standing in from of the open freezer door…
Two years ago I took the winter linings out of my bike gear only to have to put them back in a few days later. Last year I didn’t even bother taking them out. Three warm days on the trot, do I dare to contemplate taking them out again? Totally agree about the grumpy gits who complain that it’s too hot.
For the past two days I’ve been out in summer riding gear.
Too hot? not even particularly warm round here. The complaining is all part of selling the gorbal worming thing I’d imagine?
Oh, and the Gulf stream doesn’t sweep ‘all that warm air’ over us, it’s an ocean current. You’re absolutely correct that it’s the warm air that causes the UK temps, RATHER than the Gulf stream. 🙂
Heatwave? what heatwave? This is normal temperature for late May. It’s just we’ve had a bloody awful year so far it just seems like a heatwave to contrarian twats filling space on the MSM.
I’ve knocked about the world a bit in my time. If you want hot try Egypt this time of year. We did a Nile cruise some years back and it was 110f by 11am. Pushing the doors open from the air conditioned interior of our cruise boat to get on deck for a beer and a bit of picturesque view was like an concussion grenade going off, and that temperature is absolutely bloody normal for Egypt.
I had a woman sat next to me on the plane coming back from Turkey one time. She had everything (supposedly) wrong with her and had to have the veggie meal etc, was bestrung by all the healthwise good luck charms in wristbands that would miraculously do this that and the other for her parlous health, and proceeded to winge to me for three hours about her dreadful holiday, how it was much too hot, the food was terrible (I’d say Turkish food is in the top three worldwide myself) etc etc. Well I’m a pleasant well mannered sort of chap, but after hours of this, I finally snapped… “I’m sad that you had such a terrible time madam, but have you ever heard of Iceland?” Oh yes she said… “Well why the fuck didn’t you go there for a holiday instead?”
I’ve been having a great time the last few days myself, walking the bonkers dog along the Kennet and Avon canal in Bath, and in our local park. Bliss! my wellbeing level has soared 100%
It depends who you are and what you do.
One hour trapped in a stalled Piccadilly line train yesterday dressed in a suit did nothing to bring me around to your way of thinking.
It also occurred to me whilst walking home that now’s the time to lower your car windows and share your chav/gangsta musical tastes with the world. At least that’s what many drivers are doing today.
The cold weather gets rid of the rat people. They stay indoors and watch television. Good weather brings with it the promise of stripping one’s shirt off and drinking cider in the park to the rats.
I come from a hot country, perhaps 35 years of baking summers used up my allowance.
In any event, I don’t want to take your pleasure away from you. If you like it, enjoy it, but not liking it doesn’t mean that one’s a miserable sod.
But you aren’t writing articles in the Guardian pouring cold water on my few brief days of warm weather, are you?
That’s what gripes so much with me – the moaners who can’t just let us enjoy this brief moment – and it is brief.
Why not stop reading the ‘Comment is Free’ section of the Guardian then? It’s not like these people are coming up to you in the street or knocking on your door and complaining is it?
1976 was not funny nor was 2003.
However, I remember two succesive years, the first where the “summer” wasn’t at all, and the next was absolutely perfect.
!958 & 1959.
58 was cold & it pissssed.
59 – we had glorious sunshine for months – BUT it rained about once a wekk or so, and usually at night.
PERFECT
Clough Williams-Ellis thought it so good, he erected a statue to its’ memory in Porthmeirion.
For the time being, the plants are going mad, with the warmth and the surface water.
So – what we NEED is rain, a little of it, about every 10 days or so.
That’ll do nicely.
Nah, balls to ya. Those of us who prefer various other kinds of weather (snow, summer rainstorms, autumn wind, whatever) have to put up with most people complaining about the weather for all the days when it isn’t ‘glorious sunshine’… and we seem to get treated like freaks for not wanting to be out enjoying ourselves.. whereas I have *never* given anyone a funny look for not wanting to go out for a walk in a thunderstorm.
Each to their own, of course, but if the sun-lovers get to complain about the weather on the 360 days of the year when it’s not to their liking, the rest of us get to complain on the five days that it is. It’s only fair.
But that’s just it, I don’t like the cold and certainly hate the snow, but I don’t start a borefest over it.
But a whole heap of people do.. including plenty who write newspaper columns. So unless you expect all newspapers to stop publishing any negative appraisal of the weather you’ve got to give this Graun fella a pass. He’s just expressing a minority view. Ignore him and enjoy the sunshine, like the whacko-freakin’ lizard you are.
Ahhh the summer of ’76…digging up the melted tarmac in the pavements with sharpened lolly ice sticks…being sent home from school when the ladybird swarm invaded all the classrooms…unashamedly topless on the beach every day (no boobs yet and no paedo hysteria )…peeeeeeling off sunburned skin in long strips and then going out to play and burning the raw bits again (:O child abuse !)….happy days 🙂