WEATHER WARNING

We are as obsessed with the (wonderful) weather in the Merse as the next man-our occasional garden help, a gnarled (youngish) countryman cannot introduce any new topic without a discourse on the weather, nor abandon an old one for that matter. But our devotion to meteorology and the other black arts is ignored by the pundits at the BBC Blether Centre who neither know where the Borders are nor care. We get lumped in with 'Scotland' or 'Northern England' and by the southhron- centric the presenters on the Today Programme as that huge area of Anglia Deserta which they vaguely believe exists beyond Hampstead. 'Here be Bumpkins'

So the advent of the on-line weather map is a great boon and we can find ourselves on the larger scale ones. An example is above from Met Check and once you have got over the vivid, lurid, at times frightening, colours you are reassured to know, that weatherly speaking, we are part of the greater scheme of things-and have our own delicious, albeit, rarely delicate, shading and are regarded by that great crayon in the sky as equal value as say, the Home Counties where Mr Humphries friends garage their Chelsea Tractors and moan about congestion charges impeding their access to St James Clubland.

Is Met Check Accurate? Is the Pope an Agnostic?* You can put in your post code and get your own forecast covering the whole region from the Old Manse to the former Primary School. According to the prognostication for today (given in three hourly chunks) it is about to snow on higher ground (Village Hall roof?) and we now have 37mph winds. Nearly right. There is a warm drizzle and a dead calm. Daringly I inserted another post code-our cottage in Norn Iron; precisely (wrong word) the same forecast. Although, to be fair, the wind had allegedly eased a notch. I called a friend there and asked about the snow-he said that once the blue sky had cleared there might be a chance of it. I tried Llandudno. Same difference.

I suppose they may be right somewhere

Horrors I may have to go back to the BBC

*A meaningless aside, presumably. Blog-ed

Labels: BBC Blether Centre, Merse, Met Check, Scottish Borders

  ¶ 11:27 AM