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It's time to talk weather.
That's right, every now and then, especially when there's not a lot happening in the sci-tech sector, I like to have a moan about the weather. It's the ultimate fall-back topic for a slow day.
As I type this, at 5am, the temperature outside is barely 4 degrees and I have been running a fan heater in my office since I got up at just after 2am.
A cold day or two in mid-summer is not uncommon so why am I whinging today?
Well it's not just a cold day or two. I've been running my heater most mornings in recent weeks where the temps have inevitably been between 4 and 8 degrees C just before sunrise.
What the heck is going on?
Even as the day rolls on and the sun comes out, temperatures around here still fall far short of what are normal for this time of the year.
I spend all winter waiting patiently for the balmy summer days when I can wear just a teeshirt and shorts from the time I rise until the time I hit the sack. What's more, the prospect of going on a good long hike in temps that are 25-30 deg C is very comforting when it's cold, windy and/or raining outside in mid July.
I'm sorry but this summer has been a bust and I see no promise of improvement on the immediate horizon.
Most days I try to get in about 10-20Km of walking, that's two to four hours at a brisk pace. This sort of activity in mid-summer usually sees me sweating by the end of such a hike but, of late, I've been bone-dry even after hauling myself up a hill with kilos of groceries in my backpack. Instead of beads of sweat, I've got goosebumps from the cool breeze.
I'm pretty sure that right now any younger folk reading this are probably muttering to themselves "what's he on about, it's just a bit cooler than normal" and if I wasn't approaching my departure from the planet at at a great rate of knots I'd likely be singing from the same hymn book.
However, I'll be 72 in about a month and sooner or later it'll be my *last* summer. The reality is that I have no idea how many more summers (if any) I'll be able to enjoy so I start to feel quite short-changed when we get a bum one as appears to be the case today.
Despite the "cooler" temps I remain upbeat however.
Most days the sun *is* shining and I can still enjoy the outdoors, albeit without the joy that comes from really pushing yourself in the heat of a real summer's mid-afternoon temperatures.
If I have to put on a thick shirt and run my heater for a few hours in the very early morning then so be it. It's not optimal but it's still better than the freezing cold of mid-winter as far as I'm concerned. There's also something quite entertaining about watching other people wandering about in puffer-jackets during January.
All of this does leave me wondering where all the heat we should be enjoying has ended up.
Australia has copped some pretty high temperatures of late but the UK has seen its lowest temps in more than a decade so there's some interesting redistribution going on. Is this all just a part of the chaos produced by climate change or are we simply seeing some unrelated random weather?
My fingers are now crossed, hoping that our lacklustre summer to date suddenly turns a corner and becomes a gorgeously warm Indian summer that runs well into late autumn.
Dreams are free!
Carpe Diem folks!
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