Lens-Artist Challenge #286 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

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.