Shifting Seasons

Suffice to say it is in the very fabric of my national culture to discuss the weather, increasingly though it seems this is not just part of some mundane or inane time passing conversation but instead a reaction to changes to all of that we have become accustomed. Weather is everywhere in my life, in my language in the many and various clichés and colloquialisms of my outdoor work and leisure. All that I hold dear in nature and sport is governed by the seasons and their change. April showers that evolve in to warm dry summers with Sunday cricket drifting on into light evenings; it’s been the same for all living memory. Of course the weather, perhaps more in this country than elsewhere, cannot be predicted but generally we get things done, by hook or by crook or under brolly. Wimbledon is played - even if it runs over and stawberries and cream is eaten, with or without the odd summer downpour; test match special thrives on a rain break and it is these things that keep Britannia’s islands in the great category to which she has become accustomed. However, something strange is happening to our climate or perhaps it’s not strange if you listen to the scientists and look at the larger picture of an expanding population with the pollution it brings. Those April showers are becoming early summer hazy days and the coming of autumn is increasingly an Indian summer; meanwhile in-between we have days like today, wet and gloomy. Another June Sunday with village fetes attended in wellingtons, cricket teams phoning around news of cancellation and abandonment. As we get more wet summer days I've begun to think of British weather more in terms of a tropical climate with a wet season and extremes normally associated with far flung destinations, rather than our temperate norm.

So what’s the reaction to this unseasonal downpour? In my case make sure the team is aware cricket is off, before resorting to sport on television, write up this blog and cook roast beef and Yorkshire puds with the added bonus of in-season strawberries and cream for dessert. But away from this damp Sunday and looking at climate change as a whole, our world is undergoing a weather revolution and with that will come a transformation of language and culture that has developed alongside it; we'll need to get used to it as we've come too far to ever rectify it.