The summer is upon us in Britain: sunny days, long warm evenings and lovely tans… will not be found, not in the British summer at least. However: scattered showers, overcast conditions and high winds can all be found – so much for global warming.
The British summer is always unusual, last year a barbeque summer was predicted; and in fairness to the Met Office, we were given the a barbeque summer – so long as the barbeques we were planning on having had a monsoon theme to them. One can only hope, for the sake of their spouse and children, that the head of the Met Office isn’t on a performance related pay scheme.
Forecasting is always going to be hard, in effect you’re trying to predict the future and that’s no easy job – who for example would have predicted that Boris Johnson would be allowed to run one of the most important cities in the world?
With certainty, the meteorologists are better predictors of the future that the so called “fortune tellers” that can often be found a fairgrounds. These fortune tellers often ask questions such as, “does the name John mean anything to you,” to which the person answering has 2 options:
- Answer “yes” and then you can explain a bit about John.
- Answer “no” at which point the fortune teller will say, “he will come into your life soon” – if he doesn’t, which is likely, then you’re hardly going to be able to track the fortune teller down.
Such is the cloudiness of what fortune tellers say that they now have to officially state that their advice is purely entertainment – a move that, unsurprisingly, the fortune tellers didn’t see coming and one wonders if the weather forecast should display the same warning.
In fairness, we shouldn’t really complain about the weather forecaster, it’s not their fault that the British summer tends to be intertwined with bad weather, in a manner similar to which the England football team is intertwined with underachievement and the words “British Telecom helpline” are intertwined with being an oxymoron.
It would be nice to be able to go out to the beach and enjoy a hot summer’s day, safe in the knowledge that it will remain a hot summer’s day, yet the last time I went to the British seaside, I had to go and buy a jumper to keep myself warm, and this was in August – whilst I wanted to see some beautiful blue skies and the feeling of the sand going between my toes, I ended up with blue hands and my toes nearly dropping off due to frostbite.
I always think the summer and the British seaside has always been associated with something slightly smutty, perhaps is it the Carry On style postcards that adorn the independent seaside newsagents. I don’t think that there has been a Carry On film recorded at the seaside, but it would have been a good idea; it would certainly give a legitimate reason for Barbara Windsor to be wearing a bikini and the writers would no doubt find an adequate reason for said bikini to fall off. Furthermore, the setting could easily be at a port town – that way Kenneth Williams could make jokes about sailors and the amount of discharged seamen on the streets.
But the British seaside during the summer appears to be a heaven for older people, often sensibly dressed in overcoats, tailored cotton trousers and black shoes, and who can blame them, the weather will often chance dramatically. It really is a shame though that our older people who’ve worked hard all their life aren’t afforded the luxury of nice weather in the summer, consequently people will instead holiday abroad.
The British will often head over to Spain, Portugal or Greece their holidays and battle with the rest of Europe in a competition to secure a sunlounger as early in the day as possible. At least by heading abroad, the schoolchildren aren’t subjected to the TV adverts that occur 1 day into the 6 weeks holidays saying that they will soon be “going back to school soon”, the children are aware of this, so it would be nice not to constantly remind them of the inevitable – you don’t see people going around an old peoples’ home and advising them that they will be dying soon, similarly, you don’t see people at a John Terry’s house telling his wife that her husband is probably having an affair, allegedly.
Yet, once the sunlounger is reserved, a week long project to change the colour of your body can commence, which will go one of two ways – firstly, you will burn and turn a shade of red which is slightly brighter than a highly embarrassed and heavily bleeding tomato or you will go brown and your body will have a higher leather content than Tom Jones’ trousers. Accordingly, on your return from holiday you need to ensure that you don’t visit the Land of Leather, just in case someone puts a price tag on you and includes you in their closing down sale – which a sale that has been ongoing since 1894.
Perhaps it is this desire to sunbath/burn that drives people to the sunnier spots, as well as the want to be close to the more attractive people, obviously for the younger man, there is the opportunity to froth at the mouth at the topless sunbathers from around the world… indeed, I once remember lying on a sunlounger next to an American with the biggest breasts I’d ever seen… he was enormous…
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