Dribble

Yesterday evening, as I sipped a refreshing summer cooler*, the Cornish sky was kissed with searing pinks and reds, flamed with a glowing orange, shitfaced with colour.  It was the kind of summer sky which grabs the heart and atomises it.  This morning I looked out of my bedroom window and half expected to see Noah and all his wee beasties looking smug and dry in their Godboat, so plentiful was the rain. It was truly shitting down. Luckily I'd cashed in my year's worth of Nectar points for a rather fetching floral umbrella so at least I can pretend it's sunny when it's actually raining sideways.

Now the sky is grey and there is an all-encompassing drizzling mist across the ground. It is clearly summer in England. I differentiate England from the rest of Britain, because I’ve never seen anything but rain in a Welsh summer, Scottish summers are made of midges, and I was mostly in the pub when I went to Ireland, and so don’t feel qualified to speak about the Emerald outdoors. I’m sure it’s there, in the same way that the centre of the earth is there. I’m vaguely aware of it,  but it never really concerns me.

It is telling that the words British Summer Time do not stereotypically invoke visions of turquoise sunsets, sticky thick heat and bronzed bodies lazily going about their daily lives but rather a reminder to change your clocks and feel jetlagged at work for half a week. I suspect this deed is less to do with the changing light of days and more to do with the fact that we need a marker so we can say for definite that it is summer because, although the weather might bear witness to the contrary, we’ve changed our clocks, so it has to be summer.

I didn’t really believe people who claimed that a pre-occupation with weather was peculiarly British trait when I was younger, because I thought stereotypes were lazy, and that we didn’t really talk about the weather ad nauseam. As I’ve grown older and wiser and rounder, I found that the reason for many stereotypes is a tenuous grounding in reality. Northeners are friendlier (or more intrusive, if you’d prefer), goalkeepers and drummers are all slightly nuts, and Tories are callous heartless tautological arseholes.

And the British, generally, talk about the weather. Frequently. I suspect there are two reasons for this. One is as a conversational ‘in’, especially with strangers/potential romances. Lots of Rain We’re Having opens the gates for Nice Eyes leading to Here’s My Number which swiftly steps into I Do and it all ends happily with You’ll Hear from my Lawyer.

The second reason is that we have lots of it, over forty-nine different flavours, and it can’t be taken for granted.  We spend our lives subconsciously noting how minute atmospheric pressure changes mean that although, yes, the sky is blue, and yes, although the sun is battering down, it is clearly going to start raining like a motherfucker in twenty minutes. More so if you leave house without a coat.  This ingrained, hypersensitive barometer allows us to negotiate our way through the fickle meteorological smorgasbord in which we are immersed.

But it comes at a price. Like the model train collector, or antique lawnmower collector you surprisingly find yourself talking to a party at which you know no-one else, expertise borders on obsession. I think it’s time we decided to shed this weather-obsessed image, and to promote ourselves globally with a more hip, glamorous image.  There must be other interests we share as a group of nations, something with more jazz and dazzle around which we can start all conversation.

It is with a sense of national obligation, therefore, that any conversation I have with anyone who is not a native Briton, and probably even if they are, will not be about the weather. It’s time to forge a new National Stereotype, to change our global image. Something sexy and dynamic, worthy of the Twenty First Century. A topic we can all unite about, about which we can all have an opinion or an anecdote. I’m going talk about Nectar Points. Join me in this brave new world. Do it for your country.


*Sainsbury's Vodka. Double Nectar Points