British Peculiarities, Part 1: Sunshine

Last week we got three whole days of it. The sun was out, the temperatures soared like crazy to... around 60 degrees farenheit. And everyone was happy. Work, cares forgotten. People playing sports, reading, hanging out, picknicking, and talking non-stop about this wonderful pre-summer "heatwave." There were even some crazy poseurs sunbathing. This is Edinburgh, and at the time it was still winter. I love to lay out and fry myself brown, but adding pneumonia to the cancer risk just doesn't add up for me. British people just go crazy in warm weather. Because we get SO LITTLE OF IT. Case in point number 2, after a subsequent week of the usual seasonal grey and wind to add a touch of pathetic fallacy to dissertation hand-in week, followed last night by temperatures of a less-than-balmy -1 celcius (30 F) back home in Leeds and today's sunshine sent my father out into the garden, sans coat, fairly early in the morning to bask. I later made the trip outside, and even with a coat, jumper and tee, I felt reasonably chilly. The sun is strong and warming, yes, but the air is most certainly not. But in Headingley the students (oh, to talk of 'other people' with a collective noun that can be applied to myself) were all out in force in flipflops and board shorts, not a coat to be seen. And it will probably rain most of the year until....well, next year. We'll get a few days of genuinely warm sunshine which will see the parks fill with half-naked bodies (and I shall no doubt throw myself into the madness) and people will complain "Oh, it's so hot, it's too hot..." Is this really what you want, oh Great British Public? Sporadic days of tolerable warmth to revel in in hope of a summer that, if it does come, you will then bemoan?