Climate – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Whatever the Weather

Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not!
Traditional

I thought I’d put together Anne’s Lens-Artist Challenge #286 – Weather – with the aid of children’s rhymes.

Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day.
Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again!
Traditional

A shot taken not in England, but in Bavaria, Germany

It’s not just children who’d willingly sing this these days. In the UK it’s rained pretty much constantly all this year. But in Spain, they’d cheerfully take some of our surplus. In Catalonia, in mid-winter, the reservoirs are a mere 16% full, and water-use restrictions are in place.

When the wind is in the east
'tis neither good for man nor beast. 
When the wind is in the north, 
the skilful fisher goes not forth. 
When the wind is in the south, 
it blows the bait in the fishes' mouth. 
When the wind is in the west, 
then 'tis at the very best.
Traditional

A particularly windy May morning near home.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbour and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg

I can’t claim that Carl Sandburg’s is a children’s rhyme. I couldn’t think of one. Can you?

Fog slowly lifting near Burnsall, Wharfedale

The north wind doth blow,
and we shall have snow,
and what will the robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn,
and keep himself warm,
and hide his head under his wing, poor thing!
Traditional.

The field-just-down-the-road one January.

This hardly-there snow is pretty typical of wintry conditions in England. And I know that a robin lives pretty close by: this field almost qualifies as my back yard.

The robin -just-down-the-road, not in January

Red and yellow and pink and green,
purple and orange and blue:
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.
Arthur Hamilton

All three of my children used to sing this one – often – at assembly in primary school. I wonder if it’s still going strong?

Lofthouse in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire.

So that’s it. Oh, hang on, I’ve forgotten something. Sunshine. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? It’s February in England, and famously sunless. Let’s show British sunlight, rather than the full-on sun of the holiday of our dreams.

It’s September. The schools have gone back, so here is a sunny beach, gloriously (almost) empty in Filey, North Yorkshire

And most children can sing the less-than-traditional The Sun Has Got His Hat On by Noel Gay. So let’s leave you with this cheery version.

The North Wind doth Blow?

Have you noticed? For all we’ve been focussed on day-to-day weather recently, it’s the temperature we’ve talked about, here in Europe at any rate (‘Phew it’s too hot!’), and the lack of rain (‘Oooh, my poor garden!). I realised, only the other day, that wind has been in short supply. No summer breezes, no brisk gusts, no sudden squalls.

Then Rebecca’s Monthly Poetry Challenge dropped into my in-box. She wants us to write about wind, employing the literary device of anaphora. No, I didn’t know what that was either. You can read about it here.

I could have snuck in and offered the rhyme that my children were brought up on.

When the wind is in the east,
’tis neither good for man nor beast;
When the wind is in the north,
the skillful fisher goes not forth;
When the wind is in the south,
it blows the bait in the fishes’ mouth;
When the wind is in the west,
then ’tis at the very best.

But that would be cheating.

So here we are …

This is wind: softly susurrating.
This is wind: sweetly sighing.
This is wind: breezily billowing.
This also is wind: galloping gustily;
roaring and raging; shrieking and storming -
destructive; disastrous.
Here today.  Gone tomorrow.
This is wind.

And it turns out that wind is not after all an endangered species.  Yesterday was properly windy, for the first time in weeks.

A portrait of a reservoir

This year has offered proof after proof that the times they are a changin’. Here, harvesting was started in mid-July, and was all done and dusted for early August. Yet schools and churches will probably continue to hold their traditional Harvest Festivals in late September, early October. Blackberries have withered a whole month early, so the Devil must have been along and spat on them. Autumn-ripening apples are already at their best. And, most worryingly of all, the reservoirs are drying up. Here are some shots of Scar House Reservoir in North Yorkshire. The header photo, and the last one of all were taken two years ago. The rest, only last week.