Hail is falling. It looks like snow, to warm the heart, but I’m informed it’s hail and the dark misery falls heavy like an anvil through my once-hopeful heart. It’s April – was our brief ray of sunshine signalling the beginning of spring merely a cruel joke from the weather gods?

 Luckily, a clap of thunder brings some much needed levity as the entire office makes a jumping movement in their seats, followed by a swift ‘ooh!’ of excitement. Everyone loves thunder, even those who are scared of it.

 Welcome to the schizophrenic weather of Britain. When I woke it had been sunny and cold. When I boarded my train to Marylebone it had been sunny and warm. The thunderstorm was just before lunch time. When I left the office at half five it was cloudy and raining. When I took my seat at Marylebone to go home, it was sunny and warm again. The sunset was clear and stunning.

 At least we don’t get tornadoes or earthquakes.

 It feels the right time for a weather rant. As everyone who has ever travelled to the UK knows, we Brits love our weather talk. The weather changes approximately every half an hour, so when conversation is slipping into a lull and we’re grasping at the ‘what happened on Eastenders last night’ straws (which I don’t watch, so, much like my dislike of coffee, leaves me on the fringes of society) there’s always something to talk about. A quick “goodness gracious me, I can’t believe it has just begun raining!” will revive any dying conversation. Which is a relief for me, since the latest rape, murder, incest, or laundry crisis on Albert Square doesn’t do much to excite my interest.

 I stayed in last night and watched Stormchasers. This was the last episode of a series apparently, and it followed the adventures of a group of tornado groupies in Kansas in a heavy duty tank-like vehicle. They were trying to get the tank into the eye of a twister, to film it and develop better tornado warning systems.

 Alas, it wasn’t as exciting as the 1996 film Twister, which I’ve seen countless times because I’m fascinated by tornadoes (possibly from my Wizard of Oz obsession – see my bio on here to read more about that oddity…). The documentary was a bit of an anti-climax, mainly due to sloppy filmmaking giving more camera time to the middle aged men sitting inside the tank than to the amazing visuals going on outside in the corn fields.

 There really isn’t anywhere in the States without any danger of extreme weather. On the east coast there’s the hurricane threat, in the middle the twister danger, and on the west there’s fear of the next big earthquake. Britain is pretty safe, which is why it’s so frustrating that whenever there’s the lightest dusting of snow our entire public transport systems shut down. We just can’t cope with extremes. Our slight variations (sun-rain-sun-rain-hail-rain) keep us on our toes and office workers nationwide remain engaged in conversation. Americans accept whatever weather they have that season and get on with it but have the constant threat of something menacing around the corner.

 So I love Britain for its enduring ability to make another day of rain into a conversational centrepiece and I love America for actually having interesting weather occasionally. I’m no fair weather Britican (cue smiting from the humour gods followed by months of hail).

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