One of my favourite things about Britain is the climate. Not weather.
I don't like hot and humid weather such as Japan's summer.
I've never lived in a extremely cold country where temperature drops to -20C or even colder than that, so I can't tell how the life in those places.
Here, in south of England, winter is mild, especially recent years. It's getting rarer and rarer to use de-icer spray to my car's wind screen in the morning.
The place I used to live in Japan was Kanazawa which is on the west coast of Japan, where latitude is similar to Madrid, but we have lots of snow fall in winter.
Ordinary British never experienced to live with heavy snow fall, sometimes it's reached 1.5meter deep and 3-4meter on a mountain side.
In my home town, major roads in city centre have water fountain to melt snow, and bulldozer plough the snow, so cars once reached to major road it's able to drive, though all the vehicles must wear snow tyres or chains in winter.
Non-major roads, ordinary roads, such as in front of our house's roads, we have to plough snow by human.
This is a burden to many people, especially to elderly. It's a hard labour!
And if snow fall was reached 1meter or so, we have to remove snow from roof, otherwise the house may be collapsed!
In a winter morning, after snowy night, we wake up early to plough snow, it's a duty of a house owner to neighbors. If we neglect it, we'll have complaints from them, so it is important. No one want be a public enemy number one.
If we can't do it with any reason, then we employ someone to do the job. Council won't pay money to that.
The heaviest snow fall I experienced in Britain was 1990.
My family lived in Esluv, when my son was still a baby.
It was about 30cm snow fall over night, caused traffic chaos all over Britain.
I couldn't go to supermarket for shopping by car, so I went to a small shop nearby my house.
What a surprise!
The shop had to limit the number of customers in a shop at a time, so there was a long queue outside of the shop.
That day must had been a busiest day for the shop.
I waited for 20minutes to get into the shop, and found all the shelves were raided by desperate previous customers!
NOT MANY FOODS LEFT!
I heard on the radio, it said, " Milks are coming into the supermarket! " or " How to bake bread by yourself "
Off course, that time round, bread maker wasn't in many household, and people didn't know how to make bread.
( Have you ever done it? )
On an icy or snowy day, some carelessness drivers crashed,
overturned, hitting pedestrians, so on.
Don't you know how to drive on a slippery conditioned road?
Just go slowly and avoid quick acceleration or hard breaking.
Talking about weather is a harmless subject for everyone.
We don't want a heavy subject such as politics or religion, do we?
Because of British weather is so changeable and unpredictable, we can have a endless fun!
Think about if Britain is a country of desert where very few rainy days in a year, the greeting will be,
" Good morning, how are you? It's a sunny day today "
" Yes, as usual "
That's the end of conversation. How sad it is!
British people are looking forword a sunny and warm weekend every working days, but, Oh! no, not again, we are disappointed by the mother nature.
Because it's so rare, when it's come, we can appreciate it so much.
This reminds me of a football world cup. All English supporters desperately want to win, but when will it come next time?
Even I don't remember when was the last time to win the cup.
Do you remember when was the last sunny weekend?
Who knows.
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