Snow and the Moderation Rule
Snow is not mentioned in the hierarchy partly because it is relatively rare, compared to the other types of weather included, which occur all the time, often all in the same day. Snow is also socially and conversationally a special and awkward case, as it is aesthetically pleasing, but practically inconvenient. It is always simultaneously exciting and worrying. Snow is thus always excellent conversation-fodder, but it is only universally welcomed if it falls at Christmas, which it almost never does. We continue to hope that it will, however, and every year the high-street bookmakers relieve us of thousands of pounds in 'white Christmas' bets.
The only conversational rule that can be applied with confidence to snow is a generic, and distinctively English, 'moderation rule': too much snow, like too much of anything, is to be deplored. Even warmth and sunshine are only acceptable in moderation: too many consecutive hot, sunny days and it is customary to start fretting about drought, muttering about hose-pipe bans and reminding each other, in doom-laden tones, of the summer of 1976.
The English may, as Paxman says, have a 'capacity for infinite surprise at the weather', and he is also right in observing that we like to be surprised by it. But we also expect to be surprised: we are accustomed to the variability of our weather, and we expect it to change quite frequently. If we get the same weather for more than a few days, we become uneasy: more than three days of rain, and we start worrying about floods; more than a day or two of snow, and disaster is declared, and the whole country slithers and skids to a halt.
The Weather-as-family Rule
While we may spend much of our time moaning about our weather, foreigners are not allowed to criticize it. In this respect, we treat the English weather like a member of our family: one can complain about the behaviour of one's own children or parents, but any hint of censure from an outsider is unacceptable, and very bad manners.
Although we are aware of the relatively undramatic nature of the English weather - the lack of extreme temperatures, monsoons, tempests, tornadoes and blizzards - we become extremely touchy and defensive at any suggestion that our weather is therefore inferior or uninteresting. The worst possible weather-speak offence is one mainly committed by foreigners, particularly Americans, and that is to belittle the English weather. When the summer temperature reaches the high twenties, and we moan, 'Phew, isn't it hot?', we do not take kindly to visiting Americans or Australians laughing and scoffing and saying 'Call this hot? This is nothing. You should come to Texas [Brisbane] if you wanna see hot!'
Not only is this kind of comment a serious breach of the agreement rule, and the weather-as-family rule, but it also represents a grossly quantitative approach to the weather, which we find coarse and distasteful. Size, we sniffily point out, isn't everything, and the English weather requires an appreciation of subtle changes and understated nuances, rather than a vulgar obsession with mere volume and magnitude.
Indeed, the weather may be one of the few things about which the English are still unselfconsciously and unashamedly patriotic. During my participant-observation research on Englishness, which naturally involved many conversations about the weather, I came across this prickly defensiveness about our weather again and again, among people of all classes and social backgrounds. Contempt for American size-fixation was widespread - one outspoken informant (a publican) expressed the feelings of many when he told me: 'Oh, with Americans it's always "mine's bigger than yours", with the weather or anything else. They're so crass. Bigger steaks, bigger buildings, bigger snowstorms, more heat, more hurricanes, whatever. No fucking subtlety, that's their problem.' Jeremy Paxman, rather more elegantly, but equally patriotically, dismisses all Bill Bryson's monsoons, raging blizzards, tornadoes and hailstorms as 'histrionics'. A very English put-down.
The Shipping Forecast Ritual
Our peculiar affection for our weather finds its most eloquent expression in our attitude towards a quintessentially English national institution: the Shipping Forecast. Browsing in a seaside bookshop recently, I came across an attractive large-format picture-book, with a seascape on the cover, entitled Rain Later, Good. It struck me that almost all English people would immediately recognize this odd, apparently meaningless or even contradictory phrase as part of the arcane, evocative and somehow deeply soothing meteorological mantra, broadcast immediately after the news on BBC Radio 4.
The Shipping Forecast is an off-shore weather forecast, with additional information about wind-strength and visibility, for the fishing vessels, pleasure craft and cargo ships in the seas around the British isles. None of the information is of the slightest use or relevance to the millions of non-seafarers who listen to it, but listen we do, religiously, mesmerized by the calm, cadenced, familiar recitation of lists of names of sea areas, followed by wind information, then weather, then visibility - but with the qualifying words (wind, weather, visibility) left out, so it sounds like this: 'Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Fisher, Dogger, German Bight. Westerly or southwesterly three or four, increasing five in north later. Rain later. Good becoming moderate, occasionally poor. Faroes, Fair Isle, Cromarty, Forties, Forth. Northerly backing westerly three or four, increasing six later. Showers. Good.' And so on, and on, in measured, unemotional tones, until all of the thirty-one sea areas have been covered - and millions of English listeners,11 most of whom have no idea where any of these places are, or what the words and numbers mean, finally switch off their radios, feeling strangely comforted and even uplifted by what the poet Sean Street has called the Shipping Forecast's 'cold poetry of information'.
Some of my foreign informants - mostly immigrants and visitors who had been in England for some time - had come across this peculiar ritual, and many found it baffling. Why would we want to listen to these lists of obscure places and their irrelevant meteorological data in the first place - let alone insisting on hearing the entire pointless litany, and treating anyone who dared attempt to switch it off as though they had committed some sort of sacrilege? They were bemused by the national press, radio and television headlines, and fierce debates, when the name of one of the sea areas was changed (from Finisterre to FitzRoy), and would no doubt have been equally puzzled by the national outcry when the BBC had the temerity to change the time of the late-night broadcast, moving it back by a mere fifteen minutes ('People went ballistic' according to a Met. Office spokesman).
'Anyone would think they'd tried to change the words of the Lord's Prayer!' said one of my American informants, of the hullabaloo over the Finisterre/FitzRoy issue. I tried to explain that the usefulness or relevance of the information is not the point, that listening to the Shipping Forecast, for the English, is like hearing a familiar prayer - somehow profoundly reassuring, even for non-believers - and that any alteration to such an important ritual is bound to be traumatic for us. We may not know where those sea areas are, I said, but the names are embedded in the national psyche: people even name their pets after them. We may joke about the Shipping Forecast (the author of Rain Later, Good12 observes that some people 'talk back to it, "Thundery showers good? I don't think so"') but then we joke about everything, even, especially, the things that are most sacred to us. Like our Weather, and our Shipping Forecast.
WEATHER-SPEAK RULES AND ENGLISHNESS
The rules of English weather-speak tell us quite a lot about Englishness. Already, before we even begin to examine the minutiae of other English conversation codes and rules of behaviour in other aspects of English life, these rules provide a number of hints and clues about the 'grammar' of Englishness.
In the reciprocity and context rules, we see clear signs of reserve and social inhibition, but also the ingenious use of 'facilitators' to overcome these handicaps. The agreement rule and its exceptions provide hints about the importance of politeness and avoidance of conflict (as well as the approval of conflict in specific social contexts) - and the precedence of etiquette over logic. In the variations to the agreement rule, and sub-clauses to the weather-hierarchy rule, we find indications of the acceptance of eccentricity and some hints of stoicism - the latter balanced by a predilection for Eeyorish moaning. The moderation rule reveals a dislike and disapproval of extremes, and the weather-as-family rule exposes a perhaps surprising patriotism, along with a quirky appreciation of understated charm. The Shipping Forecast ritual illustrates a deep-seated need for a sense of safety, security and continuity - and a tendency to become upset when these are threatened - as well as a love of words and a somewhat eccentric devotion to arcane and apparently irrational pastimes and practices. There seems also to be an undercurrent of humour in all this, a reluctance to take things too seriously.