IN RAIN, HAIL OR SHINE

The English are very good at several things:

-          Condiments (English mayonnaise and ketchup is to die for)

-          Retaining the Ashes (much to my dismay)

-          Having the most posh and bogan accents simultaneously within the same land mass

However, there is one reasonably important thing the English do not cope with so well: pretty much any form of weather.

The English freak out at:

-          Any temperature over 20

-          Any more than 7 snow flakes

-          Cats and dogs falling from the sky

Ok well perhaps the last one would prove to be concerning for most nations, but be assured the English would certainly reach a whole new level of freaked-out-ness.

In their defence England, and indeed the whole of the UK, has not experienced heavy snow in the past, and has only just been introduced to it in the last couple of years. However, whenever the sky turns a little white and the pretty little snowflakes drift in the air it seems to be some sort of weird Morse code for the whole country to go into complete and utter distress.

The transport systems grind to an absolute halt, which is just amazing if you need to get anywhere, a fairly common goal for thousands of people everyday. Cancellations and delays caused by the snow means train stations and airports are completely clogged with angry and grumpy people who are given no answers and very little assistance.

So you would think that perhaps if the weather was a little warmer the snow wouldn’t be a problem and life in old England town could return to normal?

Oh no I would think again.

As I learnt from one Leeds local, the highest temperature recorded in the summer of 2010 was 25. And they were freaking out. You can just imagine it now: old people were passing out, supermarkets were running low on bottled water and Primark probably sold out of shorts, which is a travesty in itself.

Us Australian’s on the other hand are a race of winners. We don’t like to lose and this can be seen even in the way we approach our weather. Mother Nature has been known to throw some crazy curveballs at our country: we can have raging bushfires and swelling floods at the same time in different parts of the country. The difference between the ocker attitude and the English is that whilst they cower under Mother Nature’s wrath, we get even and are prepared for anything she will throw at us.

A whole country of people who had to put down their stubbies in order to tackle the weather are not the sort of people you want to mess with.

So despite being able to hold their pints, when it comes to coping with any form of SLIGHTLY extreme weather the English get a resounding F. Let’s just hope for the sake of the lovely people of this nation that this global warming thing is all an elaborate hoax and the weather won’t get any worse.

But realistically, that’s not looking good.

Was I surprised at England’s complete lack of preparation for extreme weather?

DEFINITELY

Could the English learn a little from Australia, the land of four seasons in one day?

MAYBE

Will England ever be able to handle any day that’s not 18 with a pleasant northerly breeze?

PROBABLY NOT!

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