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?

Rant Time

Though I stated previously that I miss Grenoble - and I do - I wouldn't go so far as to say that I "pine" for university life in France. French life has it's pros and cons, like life anywhere, but I personally prefer the party attitude we have here in Britain (social conditioning, the youth of today, etc etc shoot me), even if it would be improved by collating it with French wine (at french prices). I wrote an article for my student newspaper about the comparisons between student lifestyles en France and over here, and on student's attitudes. I tried to make it balance, but the general thrust was despite some advantages across the channel, I'm a big fan of student life en Grande-Bretagne. However... when it came to print, the question mark in my title (La Vie en Rosé? - note the [removed] alcohol reference) was gone, and the subtitle suggested I pined for a french style attitude in the UK. Those who know me will know this isn't true, but the editing (of my admittedly overlong piece) basically made me seem like I was categorising us British as drunken and sexually immoral and the French as superior (which I'm sure is how they see us)... This was NOT my intent at all, I was trying to dispell the image of life in France as an ideal. Ah well. I guess we're all misrepresented sometimes, and it would seem petty to bring it up. So I'll just put it on the internet for anyone to read...