Saturday 12 February 2011

The English weather......



It's a very English obsession, the weather. Hardly suprising, looking out on this cold and wet February day. I pity the poor souls who have to drag their arses out of bed in the darkness, to attend some dull, unstimulating job in a factory, or somesuch. My worst nightmare, but then as Bridie used to say "we're not 9 to 5 people". I don't want 9 to 5 things, like a car or a house or any other delusional material stuff, it's useless to me.

If you look at the weather like it is, and has to be, it can be beautiful any time. But if you judge it for a reason, that it prevents work, or travel or whatever, then it can really get you down. And hence the English reflect their weather, which can be seen as bleak, grey and bland......

I hated the English Winter so much at one time that when I met the Bitch Goddess and she suggested a move to the Sunshine state I simply couldn't wait to get there.
The Flight was long and arduous in those days, some 12 hours in total. With a stop off in a snowy New York, where the shoe shine chairs at the airport had little tv's built into them, so for a dime you could watch a Soap or some news. I stepped outside of JFK to witness a log jam of Yellow cabs, all angry expletives and honking horns.

When the doors of the plane opened in Miami, it felt similar to opening a hot oven door, a veritable woosh of heat. And there were plants growing on the airport roof that would die in the English Summer, let alone the Winter. Exotic, sweet smelling, hot......

We picked up a hire car and drove out of the airport on a road twelve lanes wide. Dusk was starting to fall and the lights of the city blazed. There were billboards and neon. I switched on the radio and trawled through the stations. Little Richard sang "Tutti Frutti", and some nameless Evangelist barked praises to the Lord. We were in Miami, in America, and suddenly all of my childhood dreams about visiting the USA had come true, big style.....