Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Weather

On the historic day of the Blair-Brown handover, only one subject need concern us - the weather. There has, after all, been a lot of it lately - and it's in a foul mood, giving us a sharp, salutary reminder of just how feeble our human grip on the planet really is.
Weather is too easily dismissed as of little significance - the smallest small change of phatic communion, that without which the English would have nothing to say to each other. But, even in less extreme modes than at present, the weather has huge and deep effects on us, effects that seem to go beyond the merely physical. How we feel 'in ourselves' is greatly affected by the weather - from the various states of headachey gloom and apprehension that go with thundery weather to the euphoria of sunshine after days of cloud. Personally, I'm affected by the west wind, which makes me feel vaguely mad and (yet further) dissociated from reality. Others find an east wind bleakly depressing (this probably explains Cambridge). The terrible seasonal winds of the Mediterranean region drive people literally mad and render them incapable of functioning. And so it goes on - and that's just winds. The weather is us, it is inside us - even in our air-conditioned windowless boxes, it still affects us. To 'change the weather', in that useful phrase, is to change everything . Which, of course, Brown won't.

15 comments:

  1. Well stap me! Nobody wants to talk about the weather...

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  2. Ah Nige, there's always one… Being someone who suffers dreadfully from weather-related maladies (wind from any direction is intolerably mood-altering and deeply unsettling), I must also mention the power of the moon to affect us - I feel decidedly 'beside myself' when there's a full moon, and is it any wonder when it causes tides and, as any fule kno, the human body is comprised of 90 per cent water?

    J Cheever Loophole

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  3. In my case, Cheever, rather more than 90 per cent most of the time – cheers!
    Thanks for that - I'd forgotten the mighty Moon. As for that total solar eclipse we had a few years back - I never felt weirder in my (non-drug-affected) life - a totally disorienting experience.

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  4. I'm glad you've said that, nige, because I have sensed a connection with the weather too. I'm not one for the fairy stories myself but I'm beginning to believe that had those christian buggers not usurped our integral wisdom all those centuries ago, we would be closer to the real answer.

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  5. is it your moontime, mrs. loophole?

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  6. No, Ian, it's not my moontime, and I'm afraid I'm rather in the dark about when the next one is too. There was a time when pocket diaries included the moon's phases, but no more. I am, as a result, all at sea.
    JCL

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  7. I'm not sure about this 90% water stat, loophole. Is it by volume or mass?

    by my dodgy calculator that would equate to 150lbs or roughly 70litres. so with a standard guy's footprint squared off, the column of water would be just over a foot and a half high and this would make me well under two feet tall. surely if that statistic was half true, we would be mostly made up of space.

    Dopey.

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  8. Hmm. You've lost me there Ian. Two feet tall? I haven't seen you of course, but I'm guessing you aren't quite so pocket-sized. As for the 90 per cent stat, I have it on good (ish) authority. Or was it wine?
    JCL

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  9. Yet, Nige, all those people happily wading down streets filled with effluent risen from the sewers reminded me of the Blair-Brown handover in so many ways.

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  10. True, Chip, very true...

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  11. Phatic communion - you been reading Anthony Burgess?

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  12. Not to my knowledge, Dave.

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  13. "There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense." (M Ondaatje, The English Patient)

    for more, see Lyall Watson's splendid Heaven's Breath

    o western wind when wilt thou blow
    that the small rain down can rain?
    Christ, that my love were in my arms,
    and i in my bed again!

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  14. O western wind when wilt thou blow
    That the small rain down can rain?
    Christ that my love were in my arms
    And I in my bed again.

    Lyall Watson's 'Heaven's Breath' is worth reading for more on windery.

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  15. how strange, i've repeated myself. Must be senility.

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