One of the great benefits of living in Scotland is that one can always open a conversation by commenting on the weather. Complete strangers will enter into a prolonged dialogue based on our ever changing weather patterns. When out walking, people greet you with a good morning, great weather or no good morning and just, miserable day!
My husband says that if we had tropical weather here, the country would sink as all the people who left, would return.
I have also heard all the jokes about how God compensated for the bad weather by making Scotland such a beautiful country. Hawaii is also a beautiful country but enjoys great weather, so that settles the compensation issue.
After all, it only rains here twice a year. Once for five months and once for six months!!
We know it’s summer here because the rain gets warmer.
We are so used to the drizzle. (A good descriptive word for unceasing rain that soaks through to the skin and falls straight down, causing everything to take on a grayish hew.)
This year we were blessed with a white Christmas and it was like a winter wonderland. The trees were bedecked with snow and ice. The hills and fields were blanketed with snow and the road and pavement surfaces glistened and sparkled with frost.
It looked like a Dickens Christmas card and the countryside took on a golden glow, which looked so tranquil and peaceful.
“Oh how beautiful” you say. Yes it is, but with it has come some challenges, especially for our local councils, who have run short of grit for the roads. The pavements are very slippy and some people have had falls and broken bones. This makes for even longer conversations on the weather. And there are those who don’t want to be outdone when it comes to the hardships, accidents and deprivation caused by the coldest weather we have experienced in fifty years, or so say the weather forecasters.
Even if you haven’t fallen yourself, you know someone who has and by the time your story has been passed on, the sprained wrist has turned into a corpse that can’t be buried for four weeks because the ground is frozen and the hearse can’t get up the cemetery road because the council ran out of grit, and they’ll be voting differently next election because the government isn’t coping with this cold spell, etc, etc, etc........
Of course I have my own woeful tale to tell.
Are you sitting comfortably? Good, now wait till you hear this one!
My plastic wheelie bins have not been emptied for over three weeks now. Uh Uh. Yes, the blue bin for my recycled rubbish is full and overflowing with Christmas paper, crackers, empty selection boxes and all the other paper and cardboard we seem to have in abundance during the gift giving season. The black bin is full of gunk and all the stuff that hopefully decomposes. Fortunately, there is no smell because it’s all outside and frozen.
Why have your bins not been emptied you ask?
No, it’s not because we didn’t give the bin men their Christmas tip. They haven’t been near to get one and it’s not just our bins but all the bins on our road lie outside absolutely full.
No, it’s not because the lorry couldn’t get up our road because of the ice. It was seen going up and down two weeks ago.
We did call the refuge department yesterday and were informed we are priority one. Sounds important but the bins are still lying outside full to the gunnels.
I won’t even go down the road of ‘What do we pay council tax for?’
No, I am exercising forbearance and mercy. I am sure there is a reason we have been overlooked and in the larger sphere of things, we have had no burst pipes, our house is warm and comfortable, none of us has fallen and injured ourselves and most importantly, it’s not raining!
Wonder of wonders!
I can look out my window and enjoy the beauty of the snowcapped mountains of Arran.
Look at the sheep as they graze in the fields, clothed in their wooly coats.
I can see the children enjoying the snow.
I can stay indoors and do some of the things I have been too busy to do.
Read the books I have always wanted to.
Make soup and hot chocolate.
I am thankful for my birthright and choose to enjoy my life regardless of the weather.
And anyway, it will soon be spring, daffodils and bluebells.
Followed by summer, roses,purple heather and yellow gorse.
Then Autumn, golds and reds.
Then full circle, winter.
All with a wee bit of rain in between!
Ah, life is so daily, just like the weather!
