It’s The British Climate, Stupid

I’M in Bournemouth. It’s wet.  The sun is in hiding. a woman is sitting on a deckchair. A child is eating an icecream. Anoraks and swmsuits. It’s the British summer time. A fact notted by Paul Simons in the Times:

But a simple fact has been overlooked: Britain is a wet country. Yes, it comes as a shock. Over the past few years we’ve become so used to years of scorching, Mediterranean-like summers, when hosepipe bans were the norm, vines were bursting with vintage grapes and water diviners were doing big business. But the truth is that our summers are supposed to be wet: it’s our climate.

The accoutrements of the British summer holiday were thick pullovers and waterproofs. You expected to shiver on wet promenades, “Rain stopped play” was the national mantra and sunblock cream was something for film stars and models. That is why the August Bank Holiday was shunted to the end of the month, because the beginning of August was so awful.

Still raining. I’m off to find bits of sand-blasted glass on the beach…

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, July 2007 | In: Twitterings Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink