No. 23 Holiday Weather

It stands to reason that the week Jeffman decides to pay his debt to society by roughing it in a caravan for five days, somewhere along the coast of England; the reasonable to fair weather we have so far enjoyed this year decides it’s also due a deserved break.

Now not being one to let a lie get in the way of a good story, it’s probably worth noting that Jeffman is no big fan of really hot weather, and whilst everybody else has moaned continually about how bad this summer has been, with continual rain and negligible temperatures, I consider it to have been rather all right.

After all, I can’t think of anything more unpleasant than being half suffocated by stifling heat whilst sitting in a puddle of your own sweat. A man shouldn’t need to be continually dowsed down. That way madness lies.

But even so, there’s nowt wrong with a bit of sunshine when serving your penance beneath a less polluted, smog-free sky. For one thing, it’s far less muggy than what you get residing in the urban hives and industrial wastelands that sit inland.

So what does Jeffman find when he arrives in deepest, darkest North Devon? That’s right. They’re being lashed by some of the worst storms of the year thus far. There’s gale force winds blowing off the Atlantic, flood warnings, and as of the end of the first day there, not a moments let-up in the driving rain that’s turned the ground surrounding Jeffman’s static caravan and new home into something resembling a good day at Glastonbury. And I’d only my trilby for protection.

It reminds me very much of childhood holidays down in Devon or Cornwall, when it was always guaranteed to piss on one’s chips at some point or other. Although sitting in a Ford Cortina alongside a windswept beach whilst the heavens unleash vengeance and hellfire upon its tin roof can be looked upon as one of the great British traditions, up there with drinking and driving, punch-ups outside football grounds, and dog-fighting. It is something that every generation worth their salt experiences.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you haven’t stood on a British beach at some time or other, sporting a cagoule three sizes too big for you, huddled together within the confines of a windbreaker that’s a gust away from becoming airborne, whilst a mini-hurricane rages all around and your dad, with a wisdom and misplaced confidence that is unique to dads, regularly announcing that it’s “just passing over”; you haven’t lived.

Such episodes are what define the English, and indeed, the British character. What other nation is there that will sit both willingly and patiently in a seaside carpark on the off-chance a rogue ray of sunlight might break through the murky, grey cloud overhead, and still call it a holiday?

Which brings me ever so briefly to global warming.

There was a time when your Brit sun-worshipper could be heard saying with an almost rabid fervour: “Bring on the global warming… Temperatures like Torremolinos… That’ll do nicely, thank you…” Well it seems that if we are now experiencing the effects of this political bandwagon-jumper’s perennial favourite, then Britain is perhaps the only place where the weather is getting worse.

I can recall some really unbearably hot summers, all within the past twenty years. But that obviously wasn’t enough for the seasoned weather-whinger who’d happily walk around spraying aerosols willy, and indeed, nilly, whilst leaving the fridge door open in a bid to speed up the onset of global warming. And so the last couple of summers have been dictated by rain and wind.

Which this year has had an adverse effect on Jeffman’s jollies.

Could be worse though. There’s mass flooding and other water-based disaster across the country upon my return home, which throws such triviality into perspective.

Still, would’ve been nice to put my shorts on.

Now there’s something that should really carry a warning. You have been!

Like the cut of my jib? Wanting more? Then subscribe to my RSS Feed.