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 rain tomorrow to the BBC’s viewers, who were probably hoping for sun so they could cut the grass.

What’s fascinating about The Schaf is that, at the start of every forecast, he seems to be in a state of perpetual motion. What’s he been up to? Look him up on YouTube – every time the camera cuts to him, he appears to be finishing up a bout of on-the-spot jogging, or possibly a game of ping pong.

Maybe they’ve made him hang around a lot and his leg has gone to sleep, and he’s just trying to get the circulation going. Nervous tension, perhaps? No-one likes to be the one to say the cricket at Lords will get rained off. Particularly hot floor in the studio? Underpants too tight? Some kind of medical condition unique to meteorologists that causes random movements? Maybe he’s allergic to maps?

I like to imagine that, just prior to whichever news presenter with perfectly arranged hair passes over to him, he’s throwing down some incredible dance moves, stopping only when the words “Here’s Tomasz with the weather” echo through his earpiece. The after effects of getting on down show up on the screen, in the same way that you can’t just stop running instantly – inertia, and funky moves, linger.

Whatever the cause, the effect is amusement. Which is more than can be said about the weather.

Like many of you, I was saddened to hear on Monday that David Bowie had passed away.

As I was blundering into my teenage years, music was a source of huge excitement and pleasure for me, and I can still remember being gob-smacked by the video for “Ashes To Ashes” on Top Of The Pops. As I became more knowledgeable, I realised what an incredible body of work his music was, and continued to enjoy his ever-changing musical, and personal, styles. The man may be gone, but those songs will live, and shine, on.

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 15th of January 2016, where it was retitled as "Why is weatherman Schafernaker in perpetual motion?", which is obviously far more catchy than my suggestion. You can view the edited version used by the paper on their website here

The whole section of general unkindness to BBC local presenters' dress sense, and ITV's personnel, was edited out for some reason. Space probably, or maybe someone at the paper is close personal friends with a local TV weather presenter...

As a high percentage of the readers of this blog seem to live in America, me mentioning a couple of inches of snow yesterday may seem a bit pathetic and hardly worth mentioning, but you've got to remember that, here in the UK, we're really bad at handling frozen water. Or water in general, come to think of it. It sure was pretty, though...

(Out of order CD tonight - one of my Christmas presents: Mike Oldfield's The Best Of: 1992-2003. Worth it for BT's Pure Luminescence Remix of "Let There Be Light" alone. Never did quite work out why a telephone company were remixing Mr. Oldfield's stuff, though...)