Something is wrong with the weather

Lean in a bit – I need to whisper this. The weather has been really... quite good recently, hasn’t it? I know. Weird, right?

As someone who wanted to be a meteorologist whilst growing up, I find the weather pretty darn interesting. After our recent winter, even a met-nerd like me discovered the clouds had lost their lustre, the silver lining notably absent.

So with last weekend’s Bank Holiday looming, and having already had a lengthy run of lovely weather, I made the logical assumption; it would be cataclysmically awful. Rain, wind, maybe even snow and a miniature tornado to get the 24 hour rolling news channels all excited.

But it was, as I’m assuming you noticed, even nicer than before. Warm. Dry. Smashing. I have red marks on my arm from pinching myself to check I wasn’t dreaming. And it continued this week too.

To further enhance the distinct and unexpected pleasure this has delivered, it appears to have been cloudy, binning it down, and distinctly chilly in the south and London. Aw. Bless. That’s sincerely meant, and I wasn’t snickering. It’s.. ah... hay fever.

I had the immense pleasure of strolling around Arnside’s Open Gardens, in aid of the NSPCC. With good weather in the build up, they were tweaked to gorgeous perfection.

In one, where the lucky owner’s land extended into the edge of a wood, there was the most stunning display of wild garlic in flower I have ever seen. A blanket of white and green, highlighted by shafts of sunlight thought the trees. Breathtaking – and it smelt pretty awesome too.

Along the coast, there were families dotted around, with children playing on the sand, all floppy hats and over-sized sunglasses, building sandcastles, eating (and wearing) ice creams and flying kites.

For years now, I’ve had a nagging irritation – a dark cloud of my own. I can remember a time when I was little, when the sun shone, there were days out and fun, sandcastles and sandwiches, lollies and laughter, and it felt like it would last forever.

Life (and the realities of the British climate) slowly but surely crushed that sweetly misguided remembrance, until I, like many, reached the antithesis of it - a depressing assumption that whenever you want it to be nice, it definitely won’t be.

It will eventually ebb away, but for a few weeks, and significantly over a Bank Holiday weekend, the weather is like mini-me naively assumed it would always be. Fabulous.

And seeing everyone out enjoying it only adds to the thrill. Warm on the outside, and warm on the inside. There will be lousy weather again soon; it’s probably working itself into a frenzy over the Atlantic right now.

But the delight of what we’ve had has topped up my battery of weather-related happiness, after I had assumed the charger to be long broken.

I hope it did for you too. Use it to keep cosy through the nasty bits of both the weather, and life.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 3rd of June 2016, where it was retitled "Weather's hot topic for me".

You can see a couple of the pictures of the amazing blanket of wild garlic with this post. It truly was breathtaking - at a couple of levels.

Remarkably, despite having spotted some heavy downpours north of us on weather radar today, we've remained dry and very hot.

Annoyingly, I've got a hideous summer cold, exacerbated by hay fever, but there's a yang for every ying, right kids?

Continuing a downward trend, May's stats show this blog to have received slightly less hits than in April, making it the lowest month since September 2011, which is disappointing.

I guess I need to write better stuff, eh?

(CD A-Z: Blind Boy Fuller - "Heart Ease Blues". Twangsome.)

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