Great British Precipitation

Last week there was a day on which the sky turned an unfamiliar colour. Across our grey little island a weary population lifted their eyes from the ground and looked upwards in puzzlement. Neural pathways dusty and clogged from long disuse struggled to find the memory of this colour, mouths silently worked as they shaped the old forgotten word...."b...b...blue?" The custom of shuffling past each other avoiding eye contact was broken as we sought our neighbours gaze and found our own confusion reflected back. By mid morning most had even remembered the name of the bright yellow object in the sky and were peering into mirrors trying on last summers smiles. By afternoon a national hysteria had set in; a layer or two of water proofing and wool was cautiously peeled away and Spring was declared amidst rejoicing and public capering. By evening bells were being polished and ribbons flounced, maypoles waxed, handkerchiefs and wrapper swords waved in synchronised patterns preparing for the coming bright morn. Even the flora and fauna caught the spirit and set out a tiny glimpse of blossom while a solitary and drowsy bumble bee flew slowly past the window. We forgot, as we always do, where we live. We forgot that it is not the balmy Caribbean that sighs around our shores but the North Atlantic, the Irish and North Seas that lash it mercilessly. We forgot that we are not as other places, we do not have a climate, we have weather, British weather.

And so the morning came and it was drab and grey and drizzly. In my native Scots tongue we have many, many words for rain and mist, cloud and cold but precious few for warmth or sun...and they are always muttered with an undercurrent of distrust. The word for the days that have succeeded that little blue miracle has been the expressive "dreich", a word that, like the weather it describes, is a death rattle of the soul. Today though as we ventured outside it was to find another change. We were met with the clinging, cold mist known as a "har". By mid afternoon it had lifted from the land, or perhaps more accurately, had been beaten down by the squalls of rain that filled the potholes till the roads were awash and beat upon the glass. It was no longer dreich it had graduated to the next degree...."gye dreich".