Weather

On the historic day of the Blair-Brown handover, only one subject need concern us - the weather. There has, after all, been a lot of it lately - and it's in a foul mood, giving us a sharp, salutary reminder of just how feeble our human grip on the planet really is.
Weather is too easily dismissed as of little significance - the smallest small change of phatic communion, that without which the English would have nothing to say to each other. But, even in less extreme modes than at present, the weather has huge and deep effects on us, effects that seem to go beyond the merely physical. How we feel 'in ourselves' is greatly affected by the weather - from the various states of headachey gloom and apprehension that go with thundery weather to the euphoria of sunshine after days of cloud. Personally, I'm affected by the west wind, which makes me feel vaguely mad and (yet further) dissociated from reality. Others find an east wind bleakly depressing (this probably explains Cambridge). The terrible seasonal winds of the Mediterranean region drive people literally mad and render them incapable of functioning. And so it goes on - and that's just winds. The weather is us, it is inside us - even in our air-conditioned windowless boxes, it still affects us. To 'change the weather', in that useful phrase, is to change everything . Which, of course, Brown won't.