Just for once, I'd quite like to go about my business on a filthy, wet, cold day in winter and not have a single person comment on how filthy, wet and cold it is.YEAH, so this week has been cold. Get over it. It's winter.
It seems that ever since the
Big Chill hit the country at the start of the week it has been impossible to put one foot in front of the other without someone wanting to talk to me about it.
The girl who makes my coffee wants to discuss it, so does the checkout chick when I buy my bread and milk. The dude at the petrol station talks about it and you'd think my neighbour had never seen rain before in his life for how much he has to say on the subject.
The airways, news programmes, social networks and newspapers are all abuzz with the breaking news that right in the middle of winter when it ought to be raining and snowing ... it is.
Weather has a strange impact on us because, even though it is about as predictable as a plot-line on Shortland Street, we continue to be amazed and overwhelmed whenever we get it at either ends of the hot or cold spectrum.
Just as there will always be some geeky meteorologist on hand with a statistic about it being the driest/wettest/coldest/hottest day since records began, there will also always be a craggy old farmer on hand with a matching sound bite about how he hasn't seen it so (insert weather extreme as appropriate) since he was a lad.
And you know what comes next? We are all blind-sided by what should be happening ... aherm ... happening ... that we'll want to talk about it, read about it and post online about it as though cold weather in winter is the most remarkable thing in the world.
Being surprised by things that are completely predictable seems to be a part of the human condition.
We rate politicians among the least-trusted professions and yet then get bitterly disappointed when they fail to deliver on election promises.
Petrol prices have been going up ever since the Beverly Hillbillies hit oil and we all know they will continue to do so, yet it's still headline news every time it happens.
We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that any and all time spent watching reality TV is going to be a bitter disappointment, however, we'll still grumble about how terrible it is as though it could or should have been better.
Just for once, I'd quite like to go about my business on a filthy, wet, cold day in winter and not have a single person comment on how filthy, wet and cold it is, as though I might not have noticed.
But it's harder than it seems.
Even right in the middle of complaining about people who complain about the weather, someone just walked into my studio and the very first thing I did was mutter about the cold.
This was followed swiftly by banging my head firmly against the wall in frustration and then by a brief explanation to justify my (frankly very odd) behaviour.
And the worst thing is that, even though right now I would give away my first born to be lying on a beach somewhere stinking hot and sunny, I know that when mid-summer finally arrives and winter is just a distant memory, I will be complaining about the heat and some gussied-up newsreader will be telling me it's the hottest summer since records began.
Just for once, I'd quite like to go about my business on a filthy, wet, cold day in winter and not have a single person comment on how filthy, wet and cold it is.YEAH, so this week has been cold. Get over it. It's winter.
It seems that ever since the
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