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| Or the debt it owes to sheet glass? |
When blogging should one mention the weather? Might it hide having nothing else to say?
I try to ignore weather. It changes (usually within narrow limits). But then it always has. And it’s always there. A bit like breathing …
“Woke this morning, making stertorous noises. Later I started to cough, but only briefly. Now my eyes are watering, but is that breathing…?”
As a weather-ignorer I should have been happy with the RAF in Singapore, an island on the Equator. Sun goes up/down within minutes every day. Two types of weather: 95% hot sunshine, 5% thunderous rain straight into the concrete storm drains, otherwise a great amplifier for croaking frogs.
As it was I realised I preferred the UK’s temperate climate. Even if most foreigners believe the percentages are the reverse of those in Singapore. But not something to write about. Any more than: “My house is fashioned in red bricks. That was the case yesterday, and will be – probably – tomorrow.”
Weather may help open a conversation with casually met strangers (“Lovely sun we’re having.”) or summarising a holiday (“Well, we had lovely weather.”) But suppose one discovers one is addressing a monoglot weather-freak. (Quick solution: “Yipes, I’ve left the bedroom window open. Gotta rush.”)
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold
Keats
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail
WS
The fitful alternations of the rain
Which the chill wind, languid as if with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here & there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.
Shelley
But, usually, only when it’s bad outside.
The first paragraph of my last post used aspects of the weather to set the scene. It was not just a passing observation with no other relevance. Am I a genius?
ReplyDelete"It is 8:15 a.m. I have just arrived in Tebay wearing shorts motivated by a balmy, warm spring day yesterday signalling time for me to put long trousers into hibernation but I have been sandbagged. My car gadgetry tells me it is only 2 degrees outside. There is no hurry and I remain cocooned in the comfy warm car and steal a cup of coffee from my flask at the risk of depriving myself later."
Kenneth Graham does it without mentioning the actual weather but subtly informs us of the advent of Spring summoning Mole to get out and enjoy:
"..he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ”Bother!” and “O blow!” and also “Hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously..."
Wind in the Willows
Again: that is from brother Sir Hugh. Blogger is not letting me use my name.
DeleteSir Hugh: Perhaps I should have been more specific although I deliberately used "mention", by which I meant weather for weather's sake. By implication, who gives a toss. The weather differs according to geographic location. Also, by the time the description has been recorded, chances are the weather has changed. Also weather rhetoric tends to be banal.
DeleteAnd there's a further irritation. Weather forecasters frequently get it wrong, or they employ words that are so vague as to be useless ("changeable" is a good example). Lay forecast-listeners seem to enjoy pointing out these errors, unaware, it seems, that this practice has endured for centuries. A pathetic expression of superiority.
Where weather has actively impinged on the writer's life, a reference is perhaps forgivable. But this is rarely surprising. Ideally the style of writing should be novel and/or vivid. Otherwise the reader is inclined towards my initial conclusion, that nothing much is passing through the writer's mind.
Sam Johnson wrote an excellent essay on the weather and one paragraph came to mind with your musings:
ReplyDelete"But national customs can arise only from general agreement; they are not imposed, but chosen, and are continued only by the continuance of their cause. An Englishman’s notice of the weather is the natural consequence of changeable skies and uncertain seasons. In many parts of the world, wet weather and dry are regularly expected at certain periods; but in our island every man goes to sleep, unable to guess whether he shall behold in the morning a bright or cloudy atmosphere, whether his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or broken by a tempest. We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as at an escape from something that we feared; and mutually complain of bad, as of the loss of something that we hoped."
Avus: I commented lengthily and cogently on this, but my words seem to have been swept away by what the French are wont to call an ouragen. Along with my memories of them. Just to say there is no such thing as a bad or good weather: rain, thought to be "bad" in the Home Counties, would be welcomed on the periphery of the Sahara, sun threatens the life of my paper-skinned grandson, and tsunamis - to which weather contributes - are good for journalistic copy. I hardly need remind of you of the centrality of snow in my life when I was somewhat younger. And what would movie-makers do without fog when churning out the latest account of Jack The Ripper? Given the piece you quote, don't you think it highly unlikely that Dr. J could be persuaded to tour Scotland?
DeleteAs I run up and down the East Coast so often, I find that Yankees invariably make some sort of weather comment to me--why didn't you bring the weather? you brought the weather! etcetera. Because the far No'th stinks for weather quite often...
ReplyDeleteMarly: There are parts of North America which do not support human life. In my continuing ways of irritating people I pointed out that life became an artificial construct in these areas. I held out in the Delaware Valley against a/c for quite a long time since I found it counter-intuitive, as a Brit, to dissipate energy in summer as well as winter. But I gave in eventually. Surely many oldsters in Canada die prematurely - and in a state of ugliness with those ear-flaps
DeleteHaha, ear flaps! It is brutal up No'th, often, though what a gorgeous summer and fall. When people grow old in Cooperstown, they often get some sort of second home--rental, hovel, nice place--in the South.
DeleteYou would not survive a day in Ireland without talking about the weather. It becomes second nature after a while - and code if you are so inclined - you know the legend of the hundred words for snow the Inuit, which is not true BTW, has it's real version in the way the Irish talk about rain.
ReplyDeleteWhen after more than a decade of it I returned to Germany and foolishly continued in this vein while waiting for a bus or in line at the baker's, people gave me such odd looks that I had to force myself to stop this banter.
Sabine: While still working as magazine editor I was invited to tour and interview a wide circle of logistics equipment suppliers in Ireland, my chauffeur a rackety single mother who might have been the worst driver in the country. Not a word about the weather, lots of leftish politics, and a visit to to the Martello tower that launches the first chapter of Ulysses. With impeccable timing she got to the tower - now a miniscule Joyce museum - to find it was closed. We roared with laughter, it seemed in keeping with the narrow scrapes we'd enjoyed on the way there. I collected first names that didn't sound like names at all - Lorcan and Declan being the pick of the bunch. In a bar in Kinsale I set up three glasses of Ireland's best known products - stout from Guinness, Murphy and Beamish - to see if I could differentiate between them. I think it was Beamish but I can't be sure, thirty years of shallow water have slipped over the narrow estuary of the Shannon in the interim.
DeleteShe dropped me off at Dublin airport and scootled back across the country to cast her vote on some issue or other regarding womens's rights. Going with my blessing for an envigorating and completely cockeyed adventure. What to send her as a measure of my appreciation? A copy of Middlemarch, described by Virginia Woolf (and - somewhat later - by me) as "one of the few English novels written for grownup people". Nobody had ever rewarded her for her chauffeuring services before and my reward was an ecstatically worded thank-you.
If I could remember her name I'd send her a copy of Eliot's underrated "Scenes of Clerical Life" for not talking about the weather.
‘It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade‘
ReplyDeleteThis one was so true of this year's March weather. And April too as I recall... I love it, like all the best weather quotes it captures experience. Great Expectations is the source.
Are you one of the Feds? Just kidding, I know your true indentity; My lack of interest in the weather is that, mostly, it's ephemeral, it's happened elsewhere, it rarely varies significantly and it induces irrational states in the minds of many Brits. For some, getting wet can almost to equate to being mugged. Worst of all it's considered a "uncontroversial" subject, the conversational parallel of a voie sans issue.
DeleteAny subject can be transformed of course, by painters as well as writers. Rain, Steam and Speed, for instance. But it should propel prose, not hinder its flow.
I know the weather totally affects my mood, and what I want to get accomplished each day. Yes, these days it's the only 'safe' topic to discuss with an acquaintance or a friend. Here, if it doesn't become warm soon.....ergh!
ReplyDeleteSandi: You'll forgive me, I hope, for being an ex-journalist. And thus not in the business of "safe" subjects. You say weather interferes with your outdoor interests; wasn't it fearfully brave of you to hole up near The Windy City? You sound as if you'd be happier in Singapore where, most of the time, the weather could be represented by an artificial backdrop as in that scene in Hitchcock's movie Marnie where a street of miserable houses in a port town ends in a shockingly painted - and utterly disproportionate - cargo ship.
DeleteHmmmm, Singapore hardly...I do believe there should be more sun than only three days since April 17. And----we are kissing five weeks behind in temps or any type of flowering plants. Tulips are spears with unopened blossoms. Tonight, chance of our third night of freezing this week. Even the veggies in the greenhouse(with heater) are stunted. We moved to Chicagoland from Northern Wisconsin years ago, and I have thought it balmy here, compared to the great North. Weather has simply become weird. Supposedly we will need air-conditioning next week, probably another sign of the global warming apocalypse and eliminating an actual Spring or Fall.
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