Weather Report

I was listening to the Eagles song ‘Desperado’ last night. Glenn Frey and Don Henley clearly spent some time in Yorkshire during the winter when they wrote the lyrics:
“Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine.
It’s hard to tell the night-time from the day.”

Right now, it’s getting dark (it’s 2.30 in the afternoon!) and it’s although it’s cold outside, it’s raining rather than snowing. This seems to be the story of Yorkshire winters these days. I can remember when I was a child it used to snow so much it would come over the tops of your Wellington boots. I have pictures of me, my sister and two of our friends playing in the snow when we were around 6 or 7. The school was closed that day because the snow was so bad the teachers couldn’t get in. We are all wrapped up in waterproofs, woolly hats and scarves, our faces red and smiling from the great time we were having. Kids these days don’t really know what snow is. They think it’s something that happens in the morning and is gone by lunchtime. Snow scenes on Christmas cards to them are just that – scenes on Christmas cards. Given that we don’t get proper summers anymore, I find it rather unfair that we are also being robbed of what I would call a real winter – ie. One with frost and snow for more than half a day at a time. I would love to spend a year or so living somewhere that has proper seasons. Somewhere like New England where, as the great Bill Bryson says, you don’t mind the cold hard winters so much because you know you will get a hot summer to follow.
It would make wardrobe planning far easier I feel – you would know that you didn’t need a sweater in summer and could be confident that you are not going to overheat in a thick coat during the winter.