Wednesday 6 April 2011

This is why I love us Brits. One glimpse of the sun and we all go nuts.


It's sunny today. And fairly warm, which is hot to us in rainy England. The excitement tied to this revelation has been unanimous throughout.

I woke up this morning to Lisa Snowdon on my radio telling me we would reach 22 degrees and immediately thought to myself, today will be pandemonium.

For those of you who may not be reading this from England and so are unaware of what a little sun can do to us, I refer you to the below video.



The thing is, having any kind of sunshine in this beautiful country of ours is so rare that when it does happen we know we have to utilise it straight away otherwise we will lose it forever.

Even if the forecast will predict a week of good weather, we can never trust it because you can guarantee that a stray rain cloud will find it's way into the sky somehow and those things always travel in packs.

My predictions for England's reaction to the day's weather were spot on. The train to work displayed the first skirts and short sleeved shirts of the year and the train journey home smelt funkily like a bunch of Brits who were not quite prepared, deodorant wise, for the sudden change in climate.

Lunchtime at work caused the entire hospital to appear like a ghost town whilst the grass and picnic areas (which has previously been avoided like the plague) were now packed with staff in sunglasses, applying suncream.

Facebook and Twitter have been overrun with "Look at the sun!" statuses (myself included) and it had been the only source of conversation for the whole day.

There is something so gorgeous about these rare sunny days. The world seems brighter (wait... that would be because it is) and people are smiling for no apparent reason!

Now I'm not saying we're a miserable bunch in England but rather cynical and socially awkward. We tend to need a reason to be smiling, especially if we're on our own. If we don't have a reason, there are usually confused looks by other people who don't quite understand what point there is to the random smile (I have been responsible for receiving and giving this look) but on this day the world allows us to smile because today we aren't in England, today we're in the Caribbean, 5 minutes away from grabbing our bikini tops.

Now I have said earlier that we enjoy this weather so much because of it's rarity. There is a reason for the briefness of the sun. The weather knows what it's doing. Because as amazing and fun as we find it for a day/2 days/even a week, if it lasts any longer than that, our brains can't handle it - the magic goes and we quickly lose patience with it.

This is because any longer than a week, the hosepipe bans will start, the heat stops being refreshing and starts to become sticky and then of course the grumbles begin.

"If I wanted to be this hot and sweaty I'd go on holiday."

"Seriously, all my windows and doors are open, I have 5 fans on and I still can't sleep."

"I don't want to move, it's too hot."

"Why won't it rain?"

"I blame global warming."

"When will the winter get here?"

Mind you, the weather can't win, because if it rains all summer like it did last year, we'll spend a solid three months mumbling sentences with the words 'global warming' in (yes the O Zone is blamed in both circumstances).

And that people, is why I love us Brits.

2 comments:

  1. I feel your pain. If you Google "London, Ontario, Canada" (yes, the Other London), you'll find we live smack dab in the middle of the Great Lakes. As a result, we have 3 seasons: Snow-Storm, Tornado, and Humid. In all cases, finding the right balance of sunshine and reasonable temperatures is a rarity. So, like you Brits, we celebrate our pasty-white skin at every opportunity.

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  2. I wonder if that's why they named it London, because it reminded them so much of this place weather wise... hmmmm. Although we don't really get snow storms. Just a week of a lot of snow and the whole country convinced that it means the end of the world for everyone (We deal with snow even more dramatically than we do with the sun).

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