The glorious English weather

The stereotypical image of someone living in London would certainly be that of a white-skinned individual with serious solar exposure deficiency and longing for sunshine more than anything else in life. Besides the persistent talk of weather, very likely to be done over a warm cup of tea after having consumed a helping of fish-and-chips or the other English national food: sandwiches. The subject of the English weather is surely a prominent part of English culture. To quote Samuel Johnson again, "When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather" and the Brits have certainly lived up to this statement. And the common perception of most people is that the outcome of this weather talk will certainly be that, more often than not, everyone is complaining about the weather here.

From my limited experience of living here, I can boldly say that this is not true in its entirety. Certainly there are days when it is wet and cold and windy but, unless you happen to be in the Sahara, I suppose everywhere else such meteorological phenomena do, inevitably, occur. It actually has been quite challenging to be convincing in stating the the weather, so far, has been quite mild and surprisingly pleasantly sunny, given that we are midway through autumn. Contrary to what many people instinctively associate London with, most days have been sunny, dry and not that cold; the odd drizzles did not fail to make their appearance and the utterly dreadful overcast skies too. When it comes to the latter, actually, I feel quite startled since the overall grey sky which lingers on from sunrise to sunset (actually, there is no sun in such circumstances) simply retains my well-known morning sleep mood throughout the whole day. Result: alarming rates of yawning, worrying levels of productivity (or lack thereof) and severe lack of insomnia symptoms.

Other than that, I love the weather here and feel quite comfortable with it. Whereas virtually all of my office colleagues wear layer upon layer of long-sleeved clothing which I would, maybe, wear only in winter, I go to uni with a short sleeved shirt (and a jacket when I am outside). While some colleagues yearn to switch on the heater in the office (which I wholeheartedly detest with a passion), I often long to return to my room which has had open windows since the day I moved in and heater strictly switched off permanently. During one of my daily jogs, I recently noticed that part of my route includes a street from which I get a view of my residence's building. And a few days ago, whilst happily jogging by and looking up to quickly identify which is my room before I jog by, I realised that my room was actually quite simple to spot: the only one with the window open! It seems like I am quite immune to the cold and, according to theory I myself devised, this could be due to one or two reasons or a combination of both: (a) I have excessive thermal insulation in my body provided in the form of fatty tissue; (b) during my quarter of a decade living in Malta, I have so much latent heat stored within my system that I never (or rarely) feel cold. I often strive to delude myself that it is more of case (b) than (a)...

Actually, to be honest, this week I happened to fancy wearing a long sleeve shirt and, as soon as I turned up at the office, I was not greeted with, "Good morning" but with, "Hey Karl, are you OK? Are you sick?" People actually start worrying whenever I say that I am feeling cold! In fact, I have rarely complained of being cold in my 18 month stay in London so far. Probably the only time I really felt cold was on 01/02/08, when I visited Hampstead for the first time and, after successfully climbing up Parliament Hill to get a full view of the London skyline, I thought that my body extremities (i.e., ears, nose and fingers) were about to chip off my body. But I suppose this is perfectly justified given that, a few hours later, London was about to experience the heaviest snowfall in the last 18 years!

As I said earlier, I have no objection whatsoever to the cool temperature; indeed, the perfect day would be sunny, no (or little) patches of white cloud and a fresh air temperature not less than 10 degrees: bliss! And in the unlikely event of me feeling cold, this is no serious threat to my well-being: I simply wear more clothing! On the other hand, there is nothing I can do to make myself comfortable if I am feeling too hot. The converse of the former solution does hold: wear little clothing but there is a minimum level of clothing I need to wear which is the socially-acceptably threshold of public decency. And I would rather not violate that! So, bring on the cold!