The old joke has always been that the English love nothing more than to talk about the weather. Until I came to England, I thought that really was a joke, much like Australians saying "throw another shrimp on the barbie". How wrong I was! During my three-and-something years of being in England, I've had more conversations about the weather than I ever thought possible. And, to be frank, England has some of the dullest weather in all of the world. Regardless of the season, you can almost be sure it will be cloudy, damp and miserable. Accordingly, most of the conversations about the weather tend to go as follows:
"hmmm, really is awful out there"
-- "yes, it is"
"could be worse, I guess"
-- "true, it's not raining too heavily"
Weather seems to be the default conversation in the work lift. The unfortunate thing is that even though we don't have a set starting time, by force of habit, people at my office tend to arrive at work at the same time every morning. That means they use the same lift at the same time every morning. So I'm almost always at the lift at 9.34am, along with the other 9.34am people. This means, of course, that I end up having the same conversation about the weather with the same people on a daily basis. And since the weather doesn't tend to change from day-to-day, this becomes rather repetitive. Sometimes someone will try and spice it up a bit, and it will go:
"hmmm, really is awful out there"
-- "yes, it is"
"could be worse, I guess"
-- "true. Just as well it's not because I forgot my umbrella!"
But that is usually as exciting as it gets.
This week, however, the weather really has been something to talk about, as it has bucketed down on a daily basis with snow. This time, the weather has even made front page news. However (and I never thought I'd say this), after several days of snow, ice and cold, I'm starting to get a bit sick of it. Shaking ice of shoes loses its novelty value pretty quickly. Already I'm longing to go back to my lift conversations about the drizzle.
"hmmm, really is awful out there"
-- "yes, it is"
"could be worse, I guess"
-- "true, it's not raining too heavily"
Weather seems to be the default conversation in the work lift. The unfortunate thing is that even though we don't have a set starting time, by force of habit, people at my office tend to arrive at work at the same time every morning. That means they use the same lift at the same time every morning. So I'm almost always at the lift at 9.34am, along with the other 9.34am people. This means, of course, that I end up having the same conversation about the weather with the same people on a daily basis. And since the weather doesn't tend to change from day-to-day, this becomes rather repetitive. Sometimes someone will try and spice it up a bit, and it will go:
"hmmm, really is awful out there"
-- "yes, it is"
"could be worse, I guess"
-- "true. Just as well it's not because I forgot my umbrella!"
But that is usually as exciting as it gets.
This week, however, the weather really has been something to talk about, as it has bucketed down on a daily basis with snow. This time, the weather has even made front page news. However (and I never thought I'd say this), after several days of snow, ice and cold, I'm starting to get a bit sick of it. Shaking ice of shoes loses its novelty value pretty quickly. Already I'm longing to go back to my lift conversations about the drizzle.
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