Let’s talk about the weather!

Like most Brits, I’ve developed a bit of an obsession about the weather and the changing of the seasons.  We love nothing more than to talk about it because it’s a topic we can always depend on to avoid those awkward silences when we get into the lift in the morning and your boss is there.  Conversation starters about the weather can be like a good game of Blankety Blank and will usually go something like this ‘oh isn’t it  …..  outside’  and we can fill the blank with either the word  hot/cold/wet/miserable depending on the good old weather of that particular day! 

For me though, I’m always talking about it because it has such an effect on my mood, energy levels, motivation and routines.

I check the weather forecast daily, because yes of course I want to know if I can put my washing out to dry without having to play the Hokey Cokey with it every time a dark cloud hovers over the sun,  but mainly it’s because i’ve noticed that  as i’m getting older, the fluctuations in our weather patterns can either make or break a day for me.

Here are my observations over the last few months!

Let’s start with going back to March.  Here in the UK we turn the clocks back an hour and we welcome the arrival of ‘British Summer time’.   This brings me great joy – it means we’ve slayed winter, SAD lamps can be put away, norovirus jogs on and we can slowly start emerging from the depths of darkness and cold.  Even though we lose that precious hour, our bodies and soul are rewarded by experiencing the gradual lighter mornings and nights bringing with it a bit more energy and a more noticeable ‘spring in our step’.  

At this time of year, the birds are singing, the lambs are being born, the daffodils are smiling.  Time to get out our summer clothes and have a Gin – life is great!  I even have some energy to clean the house from top to bottom and have a good old declutter, because that’s what the media is telling us to do, so bring it on!

It’s also around this time when we start to see adverts on the TV telling us we need to get our bodies ‘Summer Ready’.  Boots started doing it years ago and last year I noticed more and more companies were using the same tagline to sell their beauty and wellbeing products.   Every year those adverts fire me up with the best of intentions of getting my body in ship shape in readiness to peel off the many layers of clothing donned over winter.  

You name it, it’s on the list.  I’m going to body brush daily, epilate, exfoliate, manicure, pedicure and self-tan using that lovely mitten that I’ve not used yet.

With a flash of glorious warm weather, ‘Summer’ can appear to come upon us rapidly and very much by surprise early on in spring.  A sunny spring can catch us on hop when we’ve not even had a chance to get to Boots for the fake tan, let alone give the old toenails a lick of paint. 

But I’ve learnt now to hold my horses on this, because just when you start digging out your summer clothes from the loft, you can usually guarantee that days later the weather will turn, you will be pelted aggressively by hail and you will be back in your familiar winter clothes once again building a snowman in the very spot you had the BBQ yesterday!

Those pesky clouds will soon come back to piss on all my renewed positivity as I wait for whatever named storm is coming to batter us next.  This marks the start of a very bumpy journey to my ‘summer body’ quest because all I now want to do is slink back into bed wearing my oodie with the cat.   Hence the ‘summer body’ plan is then conveniently put on hold with the intention of – I’ll definitely do it by the time we go on holiday! 

This is what our weather system tends to do to me every year, my summer body self care plan fails in epic proportions.  Let me take you back to the Summer of 2022 and you will understand what I mean. 

So by this time, it really was the Summer and the travel chaos at the airports, along with some Covid restrictions still knocking about helped me and husband to reach the conclusion that we would not be going abroad this year.  Instead we decided that because we still didn’t want to be around people, we bought a 2 man tent so that he and myself could go camping to enjoy the great outdoors (and that’s another story!)  So with no sandy beaches to lay on or pools to swim in, did I really need to go to great pains to epilate?  Nah, a quick once over the legs with the old Gillette Venus would do, besides, nobody cares what you look like when you are on a camp site anyway, after the first night everyone looks like they’ve been dragged through an edge backwards.

Then, in July of that year,  we had the mother of all extremes in weather that we had ever experienced, breaking records and keeping us topped up in ‘weather  topics of conversation’ for the next decade.  We endured a full on heat wave with two days reaching temperatures of 40 degree heat no less, the highest on record in the UK.  

There’s a saying that ‘women don’t sweat – they glow’, we all know that’s a lie now. Temperatures at that heat, in this county with no air conditioning, just left me for one feeling battered and gross.   During that time, we were told to work from home, risk to life warnings were issued, peoples houses were burning down and trying to function at anything was an ordeal.  A cold shower and a lay down was the only temporary respite on offer, so at those temperatures, who gave a shit if you had a ‘Summer body’ or not, you couldn’t go out in shorts anyway without being incinerated.  

Fast forward to this summer and I was bracing myself for much of the same but whilst most of Europe was on fire, we experienced the opposite and it literally pissed it down everyday during the month of July.  At one point I was terribly confused as to what time of year it was and if it hadn’t been for the cost of living crisis and energy price hikes, there would have been times this summer when I’d have been tempted to put the heating on.  I was cold, wet and utterly miserable!

Then by the end of September we experienced what forecasters like to call an  ‘Indian Summer’ meaning that the weather was unusually warm and pleasant for the time of year, which confused me more because it really should have been raining by now.

It’s now November and last week the clocks went back meaning we gained an extra hour in bed. This should be a good thing right?  Wrong!  The Sunday morning after the clocks changed, I was wide awake full of energy thinking this is great, I’m going to get so much done today.   This was until I turned up in Aldi Car park at what I thought was 9.55am to be very surprised that I was the only car parked there.  That’s when the penny dropped, those pesky fairies didn’t change the kitchen clock back like they do with our phones and digital alarm clocks did they?  My routine and plan for the day was then shattered because I didn’t plan to have to wait another hour and have to go back!  Why do we still do this, just leave the bloody clocks be will you!

But alas, it’s now dark and cold and raining so the good thing is that I don’t need to worry now about my body being summer ready anymore because the oodie is back on as is the heating.

The adverts are all gearing up for black friday and Christmas now and i’ve noticed that the only thing that we are being told to get ‘Winter Ready’ these days are our cars!  Yes that’s right, just our cars!  So let’s be sure to top up our old girls with antifreeze, put the snow tires on (do people actually do that?) and dig out the ice scraper because my friends it’s going to get a lot lot colder.

And the best thing about this is, when we step into the office we can now fill in our Blankety Blank weather conversation starter with either the words cold/freezing/icy or if you are up north –  Brass Monkeys and everyone will agree and immediately we can all talk about the weather again!  

Happy Wintering everyone!