It's nearly summer...

Can I just check something with you?

It’s been worrying me for a couple of weeks now and it’s about time I developed a decent (if irrational) obsession - It is May, isn’t it? And not March? Right. I’m a bit confused then.

March featured temperatures well in to the 20’s, beautiful sunshine, and the worrying sight of me with more than one button of my shirt undone. Steady, ladies. So far, May has featured rain, chilliness, frosts, hail, more chilliness, more rain, parkiness and very occasional bits of sunshine. Before it rains again. I’ve even been unsure if what I can see is blossom from trees drifting down or a bit of snow. Frankly, even that wouldn’t surprise me.

In fact, just about the only thing to prove we haven’t just got the months starting with ‘M’ muddled up is that it’s not completely dark at 10pm now, which is a bit unfortunate, really. It just gives us more time to spot how damn cold it is and yet another opportunity to stare forlornly as more precipitation deposits itself liberally outside.

Whilst much of England recently had drought orders lifted (and residents wearing wellies, bailing out their living rooms and wondering why they couldn’t use a hose pipe when their flowerbeds were under 6 inches of water, pondered the irony), here in Cumbria the weather has been surprisingly... normal. Normal for Cumbria, anyway.

It should be a bit warmer though. I’m still wearing a shirt, jumper and coat first thing in the morning at the moment. And then I have to get out of bed to go to work, too.

Is there someone we can write to about this? Surely money spent on the Leveson Inquiry could be redirected so that we can find a solution to this terrible problem. After all, I could have told you it was somewhat dodgy to hack people’s phones, and that those (allegedly) in charge should have known about it, and I’d have done it for ten quid and a slap up lunch from the chip shop. And without needing to call celebrities as witnesses. You could then spend the millions of pounds saved on... well, I don’t know, really. That’s why we need the research, see?

Of course, Ma Nature has an interesting way of making you look like a prat at any opportunity. By the time you read this, it’ll probably be 25C, sunny, and North West Tonight will have Eno Unpronounceablesurname (wearing yet another outfit designed to test the colour-tolerance level of your TV) warning us about the dangers of UV exposure.

So is there anything I, you, or anyone else can do about it? Nope. The best we can hope for is that’ll it’ll warm up eventually, and to make sure we know where our brolly is at all times.

There is one bright spot though. We all get to have a damn good moan about the weather. I feel better already.

Have a good weekend.

If you can.

(This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday 18th May 2012. Or 'yesterday' as it's sometimes known. This is the unedited version - you can view the printed/online version here: http://www.nwemail.co.uk/home/columns where it was retitled 'Have we got the months mixed up?' by their wise sub-editors. My continuation probably depends on comments, so please go there and leave one. A nice one, if you like. Ta.)

(Grooving to a compilation called 'Extended Seventies', a bunch of 12" versions of late 70's stuff. I just listened to the 16+ minute version of Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer. Just nipping off for a cold shower...)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

The Schaf Shuffle

The weather – source of endless fascination, conversation, irritation and (just recently) excess irrigation. And a fidgety weather presenter on the BBC... I’m endlessly fascinated with the weather, and will confess to making sure I catch the BBC’s updates whenever possible. Not the local ones, where half the presenters look like they got dressed in the dark, or ITV, where they seem to know very little about actual weather, but the national forecasts. Delivered by actual Met Office personnel, their job entails a tricky mix of waving your hands about a bit, explaining about warm fronts without smirking, and trying not to look too pleased whilst mentioning gales force winds and torrential rain. Or stand in front of Cornwall. Each has their own presenting style, but there is one who intrigues me above all the others. Step forward, Tomasz Schafernaker, the 37 year old man from the Met who breezed onto our screens in 2001, as the youngest male ever to point out that it was going to r...

RIP Jenwis Hamilbutton

We are gathered here in this... (looks round a bit) um... blog, to mourn the passing of Jenwis Hamilbutton. His life may have been short and largely irrelevant, but he touched the lives of so many people that... sorry? Oh. Apparently that was someone else... Jenwis Hamilbutton rose briefly to fame on twitter during 2010, when he was retweeted by BBC F1 presenter Jake Humphrey, having criticised his shirt. A similarly unspectacular claim to fame occurred when a tweet he crafted at 1am on a windy night appeared in F1 Racing magazine. An amalgam of bits of Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (mostly the hopeless bits), he came into existence via 3 pints of cider, a Creme Egg and the Electric Light Orchestra’s mournful 1986 farewell album “Balance Of Power”, played loudly over headphones. In his short existence, he was followed on twitter by Paul Hardcastle of “19” fame, and a bunch of slightly odd but jolly nice people, whom he was never entirely sure actually exist...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog