As I look out the window of the office today in State College, PA, to the freezing almost-sleet, almost-rain, sort-of-snow, I am immediately transported back to the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. For all the negative images that the word “stereotypes” bring up, I discovered that some of them are really and truly based in reality; England’s weather is one of these. To be frank, it really is dismal.
But I don’t mean dismal in a negative way at all. I spent 6 months on the wonderful island that is England, and I loved every freezing, rainy, cloudy-skied second of it. It took many months before I even realized that I could count on one hand the days that I had seen the sun. The people, pubs, cities, restaurants, accents, and coach bus trips into London took my attention far and away from the weather – but, upon noticing it, I really couldn’t look away.
It snowed once, overnight, leaving about 6 inches of slushy snow in the morning. By late afternoon it had nearly all melted, leaving me freezing, soaking wet, and coming down with the flu. English weather is one of stark contrasts: one second it was raining, the next it was snow, and the next it was mild and, if you were lucky, even a touch sunny. Spring came like a bullet train in March – temperatures rocketed to 50 degrees Fahrenheit and even a little above, the rain and breeze turned warm, and there was a veritable explosion of baby animals all over the rural little Kent Uni campus.
While I was never lucky enough to have beach weather, and while I found myself still wearing my winter coat in May from time to time, it was almost comforting to find at least one thing in England exactly as I had expected it. Predictably and comfortingly dreary, a little bipolar, and in beautiful contrast to a very jolly culture – that’s what the English weather said to me.
Posted By: Marian Hamilton, University of Kent in Canterbury, England in Spring 2007
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