There's an old joke that the English talk about the weather too much. Someone once said that wit is humour with a grain of truth. The joke I led with is entirely true, but not humorous. Does that make it witty?
Anyway, the point is that it is undoubtedly, instantly verifiably, true. The astonishing thing is that the weather in this country is flamboyantly uniform. A balmy summer day might reach 77F, while a cold winter will see people shivering at 45F. Why people should spend so much time discussing weather that is so very nearly unchanging is a mystery to me. Many, many people have asked why over many, many years, and I've never really been entirely convinced by any of the explanations I've heard.
There are psychological explanations. People might claim, for example, that the English are generally self-deprecating and so love to talk happily about their weather, which is clearly awful by almost any standards. But the English penchant for self-deprecation seems to have decreased markedly even during my lifetime without manifesting a corresponding decline in discussions of the weather. Furthermore, the Scots, for example, have never exhibited this very English degree of morbid humility, and yet they seem to talk about the weather at least as much.
There are practical explanations too. For example, one might suppose that the average Englishmen uses public transport more than people in many other countries, so he is more affected by tiny changes in the weather. But in the many countries that use public transport more, this obsession with the weather is not shared.
The fact that such an enduring and ubiquitous phenomenon has avoided explanation seems bizarre to me. Of course, it often happens to physical phenomena, but this is a sociological phenomenon, and thus one on which almost anyone ought to be able to comment.
Perhaps there are some things that Man was simply not meant to understand. By the way, good comedians never lead with their best material.
