Rainy days and why they’re not so bad

I’m conducting my own mini Autumn Watch from my office window, as the tree outside turns a thousand shades of gold. I love this time of year.

But whilst I, and many like me, drink in the sublimely fresh September air, weather presenters up and down the country are working up their subjective commentaries on the failings of the nation’s weather. It would seem that they’ve been locked in windowless offices, sorting weather types into a mysterious hierarchy that they must duly foist upon the viewing public. The hierarchy being thus:

Hot and sunny = perfect weather
Boiling hot = good
Cloudy = average
Rain = bad
Snow = dreadful
Snowstorms = kill me now.

So apparently, constant sunshine would be the ideal. However, because we live in the rainy UK, we end up cocooning ourselves in the sterile environment of our centrally heated homes, cars, and air-conditioned offices to shield us from the darned impracticalities of nature.

Snow days

But surely the romance of weather is precisely because it is impractical. The joy of snow is the days off school, gathering round the fire, getting all togged up to go out, scraping ice off the car, disruption at work, the fact that it affects us all and makes us feel like a community. Why else do myriad people crash Facebook with excited updates every time a flake falls from the sky?

I’m not talking here about extreme weather phenomena, such as tropical storm Irene, with its tragic consequences in the US. No, I’m talking about the delicious unpredictability of the mild undulations of the British seasons.

Even the fiscal impact of ‘bad’ weather (which caused the UK economy to contract 0.5% this January), shouldn’t deter us from embracing the seasons. No company can control the weather, so perhaps more workplaces should consider going with the flow and factoring in a few snow days every winter – we’d all be much happier.

Embrace the seasons

And it’s not just me who’s rather looking forward to the capricious and lively moods of autumn. According to a study carried out at Humboldt University in Berlin, people (more specifically, Germans) can be divided into one of four categories. Those who:

1. Are unaffected by the weather or seasons
2. Love summer
3. Hate summer or
4. Love rain.

Now, as a weather junkie falling into at least two of those categories, I’m not quite down with the conclusions of this survey. But the outcome does suggest that we all have differing views on the weather – not some uniform love of sun and hatred of rain, as suggested by our beloved weather presenters.

The ups and downs of the seasons keep life interesting and our land green and pleasant. There would be no fields of daisies in which to picnic during the ‘good’ warm days, were it not for the 1126mm of ‘bad’ rain that fall every year in the UK.

Seasons, a metaphor for life, allow for heady highs, wild winters and mild melancholic middle ground. As Ecclesiastes states, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heaven… A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

So let’s emerge from our sterile cocoons, where we believe that every day must be the height of summer, turn off our weather forecasts, throw our arms (and windows) open and dance in the rain.