Whatever the Weather

We had gale force winds in Sydney last night. I know the leaves fell off the tree outside my window. Elsewhere apparently the winds were slightly less innocuous with tree branches, garbage bins and the occasional roof littering various bits of the countryside. Seriously the weather is getting more than a little silly. Forget global warming, so far this Winter we've had global colding, global wetting and now global winding. Or rather we have had local examples of all those things. So far there seems to be no end of reasons for the trains to be late.

Don't you hate people who discuss the weather? On and on they yammer analysing every fluffy cloud and microscopic temperature change in the desperate hope that people won't realise that they have nothing else to say. People who write blogs about the weather are even worse. By the time they finish writing on a subject that interests no one but themselves the weather has changed and they have to start again. Personally when I start discussing the weather you will know that I have completely run out of things to write about.

Here are the people who actually need to know about the weather. Fisherman, meteorologists and anybody planning an invasion of Normandy. Nobody else needs to know about the sodding weather. I think I see a farmer or two nervously raising their hands in the background. You may think you need to know about the weather but you actually don't. If you already have a farm and are raising animals and crops then it is too late anyway. If you've set your farm up in an environment not conducive to farming (such as Australia) then the actual specific weather doesn't matter too much as you can just take it as read that on general principles you are screwed. If you haven't set up your farm yet then you don't need anybody to tell you about the weather either. What you need is somebody to smack you in the side of the head. There is a reason why the human race has been moving to cities for as long as we've had cities and it largely involves getting jobs that don't involve spending anytime at the back end of a cow.

We have plenty of farms that are apparently doing it tough etc etc. We don't need any more. Instead of going to the country and becoming a struggling farmer just stay in the city and go on the dole. It amounts to the same thing in the end but you don't have to worry about the weather. If you really have to worry about the weather; move. You're obviously living somewhere that wasn't meant to sustain human life.

Despite the total unimportance of the weather the amount of conversation it generates is amazing. Partially, of course, this is because most people are terribly unimaginative but also the weather is a nice neutral topic. You can talk for hours to almost anyone on the weather without getting awkward passages like;

"It looks like rain"
"I slept with your wife last night"

or possibly;

"I will drown your cities in blood and build pyramids of skulls from your loved ones!"
"Well you picked a nice day for it."
"Yeah, when we sacked Nisbis last week you should have seen the rain. Drown the city in blood, it looked like raspberry cordial. And don't get me started on the pyramids of skulls all right, two words; mud slide. At the end we just had a heap of skulls and they were all dirty."

I'm sure we've all had conversations like this. No? Just me then huh? OK, but my basic point is that the weather is something of marginal interest to almost everyone. It can safely be used as an icebreaker by the sort of people who would really rather be killing each other. So here is my point about the weather. Only discuss it with people you really hate.

PS the title of this blog came from a tongue twister in a childrens book I had as a kid

Whether the weather be cold
or whether the weather be hot,
whether the weather be fine
or whether the weather be not.

Whatever the weather
we'll weather the weather
Whether we like it or not.