Indian Summers (and the death penalty)

Earlier this week my car was showing 26C outside.  I braced myself for the inevitable "Indian Summer" comments in the press and on Twitter... and yep, they came.  So, let's clear this matter up once and for all.  I trust you're listening carefully!

Define It

So what is an Indian Summer?  The first thing to point out is that it's nothing to do with India, as I once thought.  It's not because people in 1800 happened to look on their iPhone weather app and said "Oh it's sunny and the temperature here in London today is the same as it is in Bombay.  Let's call this an Indian Summer!"  Nope, it's the other Indians: the "Red Indians" of the cowboy movies - or more properly the Native American "Indians" in the eastern part of the New World.  The phrase was already kicking around in the 1780s, but it's clear it was in common usage by colonial settlers already by then.  The phenomenon is expressly and inextricably linked to the Native Indians after whom it's named.  It probably refers to the fact the warm, dry weather allowed them to continue hunting.

It's definitely nothing to do with this India

The US National Weather Service definition for an Indian Summer is a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather, occurring after the end of summer.  Conditions are sunny and clear, with temperatures above 70°F.  The phenomenon follows a brief early period of wintry weather that occurs in the autumn (a "Squaw Winter") during which there has been the first sharp frost (and possibly snow).  This usually occurs, for obvious reasons, in November or December.

Here's an exact description of the phenomenon in terms of the winds, air pressure and locations involved:

"A typical weather map that reflects Indian Summer weather involves a large area of high pressure along or just off the East Coast. Occasionally, it will be this same high pressure that produced the frost/freeze conditions only a few nights before, as it moved out of Canada across the Plains, Midwest and Great Lakes and then finally, to the East Coast. Much warmer temperatures, from the deep South and Southwest, are then pulled north on southerly breezes resulting from the clockwise rotation of wind around the high pressure. It is characteristic for these conditions to last for at least a few days to well over a week and there may be several cases before winter sets in. Such a mild spell is usually broken when a strong low pressure system and attending cold front pushes across the region. This dramatic change results from a sharp shift in the upper winds or "jet stream" from the south or southwest to northwest or north. Of course, there can be some modifications to the above weather map scenario, but for simplicity and common occurrence sake, this is the general weather map."

Right.  I could stop this blog right here.  But I shan't, because I really quite enjoy needlessly labouring an unimportant point.

New England, where this glorious weather phenomenon actually exists

Applying the Definition

Let's get these key pointers listed in no particular order:

1. High pressure off the East Coast of North America
2. Occurs after early wintry weather and the first sharp frost
3. After the end of summer
4. Unseasonably warm and dry weather
5. Temperatures above 70F (that's 21C in proper money)

How many of these fit the period of warm weather we enjoyed in Britain this week?

Well, last time I checked, I live in East Anglia, and that's several thousand miles from North America.  It's like saying a monsoon or a sub-tropical cyclone happened in Ipswich.  No, this is actually a weather phenomenon that's linked geographically to a particular place.  Indian Summers happen in New England.  That's why it's expressly named after the Native Indians from there.  Answer to 1 = FAIL.

However, if we have to continue... did we have a sharp frost and snow last weekend?  Must've missed it.  Answer to 2 = FAIL.

Was it even after the end of summer?  Well,  there are two different definitions used for when the seasons run.  The first is the one used by the Met Office.  It uses the months, and according to it Autumn begins on 1 September.  Autumn runs through the whole of September, October and November.  Winter begins on 1 December; Spring begins on 1 March; Summer begins on 1 June.

The second, more traditional, definition focuses on the Earth's journey round the Sun.  It uses the solstices and equinoxes, and is the one I was taught at school when I was but a wee pedant.  According to this, Autumn begins on the Autumnal Equinox, 21 September.  Winter begins on the Winter Solistice of 21 December; Spring begins on the Vernal Equinox of 21 March; Summer begins on the Summer Solstice on 21 June.

According to this, the beautiful season of Autumn, the transition season between summer and winter, which is characterised by the changing colour of leaves and the bringing in of the harvest, began just today.  I prefer this definition.  The leaves really are still mainly green on the trees and are still partly on the trees well into December.  If we get any snow it comes in January and February, never in December.  On 1 March it often still feels like Winter, whereas by 21 March the flowers are out, the frosts are going and it's warming up.

Therefore by one widely accepted definition we were still in Summer until today.  Answer to 3 = FAIL.

THIS is autumn.  Look outside: autumn has barely begun.

Was it unseasonably warm and dry last week? Well September certainly has been dry this year in many parts of Britain (though 1997 and 2003 were drier in England).  But was it unseasonably warm?  Was it bollocks.  September is one of the warmest months of the year.  I always tell my German relatives it's the best month to come and visit.  Temperatures have actually hit an amazing 35.6C in September before, and even 29.9C in October (the latter was in 2011 in Gravesend).  Looking at recorded temperatures for London, they've been a bit warmer some days than the historic average, but there's no freakish deviation from the norm.  August was crap this year, September has been nice.  One isolated day of 26C is hardly a record-breaker.  Unseasonable means what it says on the packet.  Answer to 4 = FAIL.

So, by my reckoning we've fulfilled one of the five tests I've set out.  It was indeed 21C on several days.  STOP THE HEADLINES.

The Headlines

Oh yes, I'm not joking.  The Press loves this shit.  As I've noted before, we're just obsessed by the weather.  A quick Google search shows that the Daily Express has been running an Indian Summer related article at least once every year in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and surprise (!) they even did one this year too.   How exactly can this be called unseasonal weather when they call any sunshine in September an "Indian Summer" every single year?  If it happens annually at the same time every year it can't be an unseasonable phenomenon.

While we're at it, every noticed the formula they use when we have a warm day?  Someone looks at world holiday destinations on the internet and tries to find a place that is having an off-day.  For example, Sharm-el-Sheikh will be 32C, Majorca 29C, Bahamas 34 C, Cancun 31C, Malta 31C, Crete 30C and somewhere that's usually really, really warm is having a milder day.  BINGO, FOUND IT: it's "only" 24C on the Costa del Sol.  Prepare the headlines..

It makes me want to torture cute little innocent fluffy animals.  Every paper, every year.  Never mind that this is happening on one isolated day, and the weather in Spain is far warmer and sunnier 99% of the rest of the time.  "Oooooh Ethel, did you see?  I read it's warmer here than in Marbella?"  "Ooooh, I know! Bit too hot for me."  Even quality papers like the bloody Daily Telegraph and The Guardian do it routinely.

The Met Definition

Some smart arse will be reading this and will already have looked up what the Met Office's definition of an Indian Summer is.   It was first published in 1916 and is "a warm, calm spell of weather occurring in autumn, especially in October and November."  The Met Office mentions it here as being a warm, calm spell from the end of September to the middle of November.

There's no mention of the fact that strictly speaking it's only really a North American weather phenomenon, and there's no mention of it coming after wintery weather and a frost, which is one of the key points in the original definition.  However what's clear is that calling warm weather in the first week of September an "Indian Summer" is just wrong even by the Met's definition.  Really, really, really wrong.  Helena Kealey of the Daily Telegraph, I refer you to the portrait of Homer by Edvard Mvnch above for my views on your article.

Now I'm enough of a linguist to realise that if enough people go round calling an orange a "banana", the accepted word to describe the orange will change to banana.   That doesn't make it accurate.  It doesn't make it right.  It doesn't make it clever.  But it will happen eventually.  That is what happening with the definition of Indian Summer - thanks in part to the Met Office and thanks in part to our beloved Press.

If YOU object to oranges being called bananas, now is the time to start taking a stand.  When it's warm and sunny in September for a couple of days, that's because it's just late summer and every single year it's warm and sunny for a couple of days at this time of year.  I'm a liberal man, but there are limits.  I refer you, dear reader, to the suggestion in parentheses in the title of this piece.

Happy autumn!


















 

UKIP: Our Last Hope

What more can be said about the apparent phenomenal rise of UKIP in the polls?

2004: something new

10 years ago I was on holiday in Poland and remember the shocked German news reports stating that UKIP had obtained 16% of the vote.  They had returned 12 MEPs.  "These aren't just Eurosceptics" they informed the audience: "They've decided they're not sceptical: they want to leave the EU."  The rest of the EU were well used to decades of Tory Eurosceptics attempting to scupper anything that came out of Europe, but this was something new.

The thought of leaving the EU seemed ridiculous, just at the point where most of the continent was celebrating the accession of 10 new countries.  Yet here we are in 2014 with poll predictions of upwards of 30% of the vote for UKIP, and our PM pledging an in/out referendum on the EU if the Tories win the general election in 2015.

Since 2004 UKIP has gone from a single issue anti-EU protest party to a catch-all repository for the disaffected right wing vote.  The droning on about EU issues seem to have been replaced to a large extent by a much broader anti-immigration platform.  Anti-islam feeling runs high and a dislike of anything not "English" (its appeal is specifically strong in England, not in the rest of the UK). 

The language of UKIP supporters

I'm very interested by the language that UKIP supporters use on social media, and the psyche of fear that appears to motivate them.  Much of it is incredibly dramatic, particularly when discussing immigration.  The country is "overrun".  Schools and hospitals are "full".  The "indigenous people" are being "pushed out".  England is "smouldering beneath ready to explode".  Wow, is it really?

When you fly over this green and pleasant land of ours, it's hard to tally the rhetoric with the reality.  Most of the country isn't built on.  No, actually that's wrong.  Almost ALL the country is not built on.  Any guesses as to the exact figure? 60%? 30%? 15%? Actually only 2.27% of England's land is built on.  "Britain's mental picture of its landscape is far removed from reality".  It's actually a remarkably peaceful, green, spacious, still comparably well-off country.

It doesn't matter though: you can reason about how immigration is a necessary thing for an economy, and an incredibly positive thing for a society.  You can talk about the financial contribution that immigrants make in fiscal terms.  You can point out that we have huge amounts of space and we're not about to sink into the North Sea under the weight of millions of newly arrived Romanians.

You simply hit a brick wall of willful, entrenched ignorance, fear and always an underlying belief that the English are somehow superior.  It's as if decades of scare-mongering in the right wing tabloid press has finally soaked in and nothing will dissipate it.  It's pure emotional reaction and the language reflects it.  Let's not doubt it, though: there's real anger, and there's real fear amongst many of these people.  A peril has been identified that goes way beyond the original target of the EU.

Farage: Our Last Hope

Having identified an apparent terrible peril the country faces, the next step is to suggest a solution.  The country has been let down by the traditional parties, but there is an alternative.  Much of the rhetoric I've observed demonstrates an almost Messianic like belief in UKIP to solve matters.

UKIP's policies seem quite ill-defined and apparently to mean many things to many different people.  Is it an anti-establishment party, a libertarian party, or a pro-City, authoritarian right wing party?  In some respects it doesn't matter.  It's just important to note that for some of those 30%+ voters it's not simply a protest party: it's the solution to all their woes.

The party is of course inexorably linked with the personality of its leader, Nigel Farage.  It's he who's on the TV endlessly.  I doubt few general members of the public could name anyone else in the party (except perhaps Roger Helmer MEP).  There's a cult like worship of the affable chap in his tweed jackets, enjoying a warm pint of English beer.  He's a man of the people.  He will lead us to a better place.  He is the "Leader" - note the capitalised L - who is the only politician who truly believes in Britain and the British people.

A Historical Comparison

I'm actually both fascinated and terrified by the mindset that chants that UKIP is "needed urgently" and that UKIP "will prevail".  For someone who's historically aware (and in my case, half-German) it's genuinely highly reminiscent of the posters the National Socialists used in the 1920s.  The country apparently faced catastrophic danger and only one party, and one man, could save it.

I'm not even going to make any Godwin's law type apologies when I post this image (which actually doesn't apply: it says that as an online argument between two or more parties grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.  I'm talking to myself here, not arguing with anyone :p).  If you don't know what it means, it's simply: "Our last hope: Hitler".  It encapsulates so much in one sentence.

Just to be clear, I do not for a moment think that UKIP heralds an overthrow of democracy and the advent of the 4th Reich.  It would be silly to suggest it does.  Thankfully, the parameters of European politics in 2014 are far more narrowly defined than those of Europe in the 1920s.  Almost every country is a fully functioning democracy.  Parties are generally grouped far closer to the centre than they were almost 100 years ago: the extreme far right and far left generally do not have the appeal they did back then. 

Yet there are valid comparisons to be made here in simple terms of the rhetoric.  When 47% of people ticked the "NSDAP" box in Weimar Germany they didn't know what was coming next: we only appreciate with horror the significance in retrospect.  They weren't voting for the holocaust.  They were voting amongst other things for "national revival" and German jobs.  Remember, the very mainstream Daily Mail in this country was praising the Nazis right up until 1938.  Their posters, their speeches and their policies attracted millions and seemed eminently reasonable to many.

According to some within UKIP,  the country is "smouldering beneath ready to explode".  Many feel that the traditional parties have failed us.  One party is the answer, one party can save us, one party is needed.  There's a dramatic desperation, an urgency, and there's a feeling that it's now or never.  There are clear and unfortunate parallels.  The Messianic belief that Nigel is our saviour, the only "Leader" who cares about his people, and can deliver his country, almost literally screams  "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" (One People, one Nation, one Leader).   I do wonder whether the people tweeting and re-tweeting the above are so historically unaware that this doesn't even occur to them,  if is it subliminal, or if for some it is quite deliberate.  Personally, it sends shudders down my back to see a "Leader" referred to in these terms.  No wonder people are starting to refer online to the man jokingly as Nigel Führage.

It doesn't matter that the threat to Germany in the 1920s/30s from World Jewry was as imagined as the threat is to England in 2014from Islam, "Labour fascists", gays or immigrants.  As much as I hate this government, I really don't think the country is on the precipice of economic collapse and disaster caused by immigrants, the EU, Islam or anything else.  It's rather a nice place to be in general, actually.  It could be far better still, and I hope it will become so: that won't be achieved by shutting out outsiders and becoming a nation of xenophobes. What UKIP has done is in some ways not identified a fear, so much as to create one.  There was no "Jewish problem" in Germany in 1933.  There is no "immigration crisis" in the UK in 2014.

What UKIP has achieved

By way of further historical comparison, UKIP has come from nowhere in a very short time and promises a political earthquake.  UKIP's  aim in the European elections is to send political representatives to a forum it despises and aims to destroy.  Other far right, yet more overtly racist parties in Europe promise similar.  In May 1928 the Nazis were polling just 2.8%.  By March 1933 they had used the democratic process to take power in the Reichstag, an institution that they hated, which they then destroyed from within, by passing the Enabling Act.  A 4th Reich isn't staring us in the eyes, but this should give pause for thought.

The effects of the UK leaving the EU would be enormous not just for us, but for the whole of the continent.  It would be one of the great events of early 21st century history, with no certainty whatsoever of the outcome.  UKIP has already succeeded where a generation of Tory Eurosceptics have failed, in getting the Prime Minister to put this on the political agenda.  They have done this by driving home fears about immigration and the danger it is doing, without even a single MP.  Dismiss them as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", Mr Cameron, but they've managed this quite impressive and worrying achievement.

What's more, instead of the Tories and Labour standing up to counter UKIP's rhetoric, they're leaving it virtually unchallenged.  Instead, they're falling over themselves trying to find ways of accommodating concerns about immigration out of fear of losing votes.  Again, quite impressive achievement there, UKIP.

What's the Solution?

It clearly isn't enough to mock Farage, UKIP and its supporters and hope they will go away*.  They won't.  It seems impossible to get through a positive message on immigration and the EU (yet we must keep trying).  Highlighting yet another story about a virulently anti-gay, anti-Islam or overtly racist UKIP supporter isn't working.  They appear daily now, Farage dismisses them as "I don't even know who this person is", they're suspended, and we move on.  It seems that it would require a UKIP supporter to suggest genocide to grab some genuine attention.  We all know the party is full of freaks, extremists, racists and idiots.  That doesn't make them go away.

Both the press and we have created this situation.  The Green Party actually has an MP, yet it never seems to secure any airtime.  Switch on the TV and Farage's grinning mug is everywhere to be seen.  He is given a disproportionate amount of airtime.  UKIP is given a disproportionate amount of attention on Twitter, by me and by plenty of others.

Our "last hope" is to get out and vote in the EU elections.  If you hate everything that UKIP stands for, and think that it reflects the basest and ugliest side of this country, these are very important elections to show that.  Analysts predict that many UKIP votes will revert to the main parties in the general elections.  However, UKIP will have a huge added claim to airtime and attention if it achieves the largest share of the vote on 22 May.  Whether you're a Tory, LibDem, Green or Labour supporter please get out there - one thing we know is that the UKIP voters will be out in force.  They're the ones who have more interest than anyone in voting in these elections.



Finally....

Look at this exchange. 

If you're not aware of the details, 40,000 political prisoners were held in the Santiago national stadium during the far-right Pinochet military coup of 1973.  Prisoners were given yellow, black or red discs.  Those with red had no chance of survival.  A total of 3000 "leftists" were murdered under the General's rule and a further 1000 disappeared without trace.

As my friend Matt Leys pointed out, it's really rather a leap to go from remarking that UKIP is homophobic, sexist and xenophobic, to thinking that Dave Jones is considering gunning them all down.

I mentioned the dramatic, emotional language of many UKIP supporters earlier.  The woman is not some random UKIP supporter.  She's a UKIP's London region MEP candidate and Southwark UKIP chair.  Do you really want her to be elected as an MEP on a package of around £115,000?  I don't.




* As fun as it clearly is



POSTSCRIPT

It's always very difficult to write a post that makes any comparison to the Third Reich, no matter how defined and limited the comparison (i.e here, to the rhetoric of some of his supporters).  The magnitude of the horrors that regime represented leave you thinking "no I'm just being a bit silly and I'm imagining all this" ...  Then you catch up on a story from Channel 4 News that reveal a letter showing concerns about Farage's fascism and racism at school and his marching through a quiet Sussex village late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs.  And you just shake your head.

Immigration

We've seen a wave of people across the country voting for UKIP recently.  Political commentators are reading all sorts into this and the potential impact on government policy.  Some Tories are calling for action both on an EU referendum before the next general election, and further tightening up of immigration.  Labour has repeatedly said it will "listen to voters' concerns" in this area, fearing that if seeks to argue against this, rather than pander to these prejudices it will lose out at the ballot box.

My response to this that I like immigration.  I think immigration is absolutely essential to the health of a society.  I love seeing people who are of different skin colours and races and hearing those who speak different languages.  They bring variety, they bring different ideas, perspectives and they enrich our country.  Fear of the "other" is to me the most primitive emotion.  In essence it goes back to cave people: "you're not in my tribe, keep out".  I don't believe babies are born with hatred of others in them.  I believe they are taught it, and the more varied and cosmopolitan the range of influences they are exposed to, the less likely xenophobia and prejudice will be.

A nation of immigrants: more so than most in the world

I can argue about history, and how Britain is a nation of immigrants.  We all know full well that wave after wave of new people has settled here since well before Roman times to create over centuries the identity we have today.  Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Hugenots, Jews... Each group came in turn and was eventually accepted into British society.  My father's family came from Holland in the late seventeenth century.  I'm sure they were shunned as "weird foreigners" with a funny name and religion who didn't fit in when they settled in Sussex.  My mother is from Germany.  She certainly had a massive helping of prejudice, both from strangers and from my English family, when she moved here in 1961.  Now by virtue of some magical privilege of time, people don't see our family as foreigners and my family has the right to vote, if we wanted, for the likes of UKIP, in order to demand that others are shut out.  It's worth remembering the simple fact that the family heritage of virtually every UKIP supporter will be the same: we are all immigrants to this country.

I can argue about economics, and how both skilled and unskilled labour are a huge benefit to us.  So many successful economies have realised this, from the Netherlands and Prussia inviting in the religiously persecuted in the 17th and 18th centuries to huge benefit, through to more recent "immigration nations" such as the United States and Australia.  Skilled workers are always focused on, but unskilled ones, who are prepared to work hard doing jobs that others feel are below them, are important too.  They do vital service jobs, often for low wages, pay taxes and spend money just like everyone else.  Blaming them for our economic situation is simplistic, stupid and spiteful.  If our unemployment is too high or our growth is too low, let's look at the way we as a society, and successive governments have run our own economy, rather than the knee-jerk reaction of blaming immigrants for our woes.

I can argue about the enrichment of our culture.  People of different backgrounds bring different cuisine, music, art and other hugely broad-ranging influences.  How many anti-immigration supporters' favourite food is a curry, kebab or Chinese takeaway; and how many love downing an East European beer?  I spent my first 12 years abroad and it's not tricky for me to remember just how limited the choice of anything non-British was in the average supermarket in 1983.  It was absolutely striking.  There has been a sea-change in this time, unnoticed, I suspect, by most people.  Modern day Britain is an absolute cultural melting-pot and I adore the very real variety this brings in my day to day life.

Hitler loathed Vienna.  It was too Slavic, too Jewish, too multicultural and too cosmopolitan for his tastes.  When he moved to Munich he declared "Finally, a German city".  After the War, (by now ethnically cleansed) Vienna was by all accounts a stiflingly dull place.  It's how I remember the city in the early 80s on my first visits.  Then, after 1989, it again became the cultural crossroads it always was, and it's a far, far more pleasant and interesting place for it.  For a regular visitor such as me, the change in 20 years is absolutely striking.  It is a brilliant embodiment of how immigration can enrich and change a place in a very short space of time.

I can argue on the grounds of basic humanity.  I don't see what gives me the right to regard all the good fortune I have, by accident of birth, as being my right to the exclusion of all others.  There are people who suffer terrible misfortune and persecution in their own countries: it was the Russian pogroms that brought the wave of Jewish immigration here in the early 19th century despite the spite and hatred spewed out at the time by the right-wing press.  It is the right thing to do for us to take in people who face hardship elsewhere, I am proud to be part of a society that agrees, and I think we will also benefit in the long run.

Ultimately though, UKIP seems to have tapped into a simple emotional, basic response.  Their supporters just don't like immigration.  If they have the right to argue on this simple, basic level, so shall I.  I like immigration.  We have always had it, and long may it continue.  The more of us who agree and who state this clearly, the better.  It is our society, and our country, and we deserve to be heard too. 

70s German slogan: All people are foreigners. Almost everywhere.

 
  

Snowmageddon

 

[This piece was written by me for the ACIS Tours website, for an American audience]

It's been snowing in Britain this week! You could hardly miss it if you were here: on Saturday four out of the five most read stories on the BBC related to the impending white doom that was crossing the country.
 
My part of the country was one of the worst hit: we had a good 4 inches of snow. Oh... it's almost as though I can sense your laughing at that last statement. Please, allow me to explain this whole issue to an American audience!

The stereotype goes that the British are obsessed with the weather. Such generalisations often, of course, exist for a reason. Many people here find social situations a little awkward and it's the most familiar thing in the world to fall back on a discussion about the weather. I've done it myself: there's a slightly difficult pause as I'm getting my hair cut and I comment on the terrible rain we've been having, or the lovely bit of sunshine last weekend. It's familiar territory, it's safe and we know the parameters of the discusssion. Nothing remotely embarrassing can occur.

I've heard it said that it's not just the fact the topic is safe that makes us so interested in the weather; it is because we don't have any of it. We're a generally mild little island sheltered by the gulf stream, and don't have natural extremes of weather. When it rains a little more than normal, or the temperature pushes above 75F/25C (I'm not joking) it's deemed worthy of serious comment. Newspapers begin to roll out the "heatwave" or "Blistering London is hotter than Athens!" headlines (or wherever they can find that's usually warm, but happens to be having a coolish day). We don't usually have natural disasters such as tornadoes or hurricanes (the last one we did have, October 1987 is etched in my memory as a majorly significant event from my youth). The slightest deviation from the norm is discussed. Put simply, we love the drama of it.

Oscar Examines the Snow. Finds it's 4' deep.

Therefore when it SNOWS, the British go crazy. The first thing that occurs is a delightful, almost childish excitement about it. Twitter is full of people upset that it hasn't snowed yet where they are. I've seen grown-up adults crying "I want snow!". Then the entire transport system disintegrates. Roads are blocked, trains are cancelled, schools are closed, and earnest well-meaning messages go out warning people to carry spades in their cars and thermos flasks. "Do not travel unless absolutely essential" is the refrain. Bear in mind that unless we are talking about parts of Scotland, this chaos is ensuing with literally 2-4 inches of snow on the ground and temperatures no colder by day than 25F/ -4C. I should mention in passing the Scots, who get snow more regularly, tend to be better prepared and just get on with things.

This, which was circulating on Twitter, is a joke (obviously) but it sums up the mood brilliantly:

We just adore it. My Twitter feed is full of pictures of the snow: gardens in the snow, dogs in the snow, cars in the snow, dustbins covered by snow, train cancellation boards (because of the snow). People tweet their locations with an indicator of how heavily it is snowing, so there is a real time record of where Snowmageddon has hit. The BBC actually had a "live snow blog" up last weekend. What could they possibly hope to report on a rolling basis? I've no idea, but people read it and watched the weather reports as if were literally the most important thing in the world. Australian and South African friends look on in total bafflement. As my Swiss friend, Rose, put it: "The UK is the only country where there is snow. Ever. In the whole world."

Next come all the criticisms. Roads aren't gritted properly. Stockpiles of grit are running "dangerously low" (or we are assured that stocks are "holding up"). The country has fallen to pieces. Why are flights being cancelled? We're a joke: how does Canada, Finland or Switzerland manage? Then comes the defensiveness: well, they are used to lots of snow. We don't get much, so it's no surprise this happens. That argument works to a point, but would be more convincing if it didn't happen every single year. After a couple of days people complain about the same snow they had looked forward to SO very much. "Fed up now. Wish this would go." Etc, etc.

A British snowpocalypse generally lasts a week. It can be much less, with all the fuss over in just one day. The press will herald its passing with headlines such as "NEXT COMES THE BIG THAW" and there will be flood warnings everywhere.  This local headline even set up a gallery of the few roads that were flooded, which will last in most places for a day.

Finally everything is back to normal. The UK is mild, it is green again, and it is damp. The drama of the snow has passed. All we have to look forward to are the newspaper reports on the few warm days at the end of March "that the UK is hotter than Madrid!". It will then rain, pretty much for the entire summer, until September when three sunny days in a row are heralded as an "Indian Summer".

Naturally, and in summary, it's so easy to mock the Brits for all this. I grew up in Germany, which gets much more snow and doesn't collapse in the same way. However, I'll also remark that the childish delight with which the arrival of snow is greeted in the UK is incredibly endearing. There aren't many occasions when an adult is permitted socially to revert to this state of excitement and wonder. As ever, and as the "Met Office" image above displays, matters are generally conducted with a healthy dose of humour and self-mockery. We KNOW we're rubbish at the weather, we KNOW we are obsessed by it, and frankly we don't really care.

In my opinion, by a long way the best thing about Britain are its inhabitants. If you haven't been you should come and visit us. Just, whatever happens, make sure it's not on one of the few days a year it actually snows here. You'll think you've landed on another planet. It might even be partially white.