What a pejorative statement. If those awesome things involve being outdoors, then you care a lot about the weather. If you grew up in a country with an outdoors lifestyle, expect that to be severely curtailed when you come to London (or the UK for that matter). If you have kids, expect them to be playing indoors for a disproportionate amount of time.

For someone who grew up in a much sunnier climate (South Africa), it can be crushingly oppressive at times.

Wait until you end up someplace that actually has bad weather. London is considered pretty mild by most standards.

I grew up in one of the rainier and colder parts of the British Isles and I don't recall any such issues with playing outside. Sure I had to wear wellies when playing in the fields or local common green areas but I don't recall it restricting whatever it was I was doing. Perhaps it is the modern need to have adults oversee everything a child does which actually causes the restriction. I'd expect most children couldn't care less about the rain and bad weather.

Also I visit South Africa 4-5 times a year and I don't notice my daily routine change much from London apart from driving more. If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.

> If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.

Oh, so then the weather matters after all. Apparently it matters so much that it has affected the whole work-hour traditions of Spain. Huh.

"Weather" can be pointless wringing, and it can also be complaints from people who live in a climate that necessitates both air conditioning in the summer to avoid heat strokes on the worst days, and heating in the winter to avoid freezing (both themselves and their plumbing). It involves people who have to worry about changing tires on their car when the winter comes. It involves people who sometimes wake up and have to shovel 1 meter height of snow to be able to get out of the house. It involves urban inhabitants that have to worry about the level of pollution in the air which varies based on how cold the weather is and how much it is raining.

Where I live, the weather is probably mostly a slight inconvenience. For you, who lives in the British Isles? I'm guessing an oceanic climate, which even if it is pretty cold in the winter it is probably not frigid, no? And in turn, perhaps overall cool summers. So overall a pretty even distribution of temperatures over the year; seldom cold, mostly cool to slightly warm. Yeah, you're probably not inconvenienced by the weather, compared to a lot of people elsewhere.

To be fair about the weather: the M25 - one of the most important motorways in England (goes around London) was closed for over 24 hours by less than an inch of snow.

Public transport in London is often thrown into chaos by 2 or 3 inches of snow.

I was referencing the British climate in particular.

Perhaps they detest building snowmen, cuddling up in bed when it's cold, drying off in front of an open fire after walking through the rain, that awesome thunderstorm with cool rain after a boiling hot day, the neighbourly camaraderie assessing the damage after a storm etc etc

I've never understood people who don't like the variety of weather and seasons. It must be so so boring to not experience, or enjoy weather.

A lot of people can't stand him, but I found Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes' autobiography, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, a big mental change in how i perceived weather as an inconvenience when I was younger. Clearly as an adventurer you have to learn to live with whatever weather there is. It is just an inconvenience to experience on the way to your end goal.

I think the obsession with "good weather" is very very unhealthy. Just think about the kind of people who move to the south of Spain to live in disgusting British ex-pat filled towns. Largely feeble minded grotesques you couldn't have anything more than a polite conversation with. Look at Florida for an american equivalent.

Further it would be interesting to see how productivity intersects with climate. A historical view on Europe's changing climate would be most interesting from a historical perspective.

I think you can also draw a lot of parallels between weather and emotion also.

It'd be amazingly unhealthy to be in a permanent state of "contentedness" for the rest of your life like some drugged up zombie. We need the bad days, the sadness, the anger, the whole range of emotions, so that we appreciate the other emotions, and feel truly alive.

There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".

Some people prefer seasonal variations in weather; this whole discussion of 'sunny year round' preference is something that people hitched themselves on about 3-4 hierarchies up.

> There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".

That's a bad comparison. Some people have one kind of preference - sunny. Others both like to go skiing and to go water-skiing.

I don't think it is a bad comparison at all. You could say people have a preference for being happy. But being happy every day would be pretty unwise. After a while it would stop being happy and it'd be relentlessly normal. Then you'd need something to make you "super happy"!

Variation in all aspects of life is what keeps us grounded and gives us reference points.

But end of off-topic hijacking for me...

Some people are both happy going skiing, and going swimming at the beach (maybe even in the span of one day). Since both of these two conditions, made possible by climate/weather, elicit positive emotions, it doesn't really have any analogy to what you are describing.

> Clearly as an adventurer you have to learn to live with whatever weather there is. It is just an inconvenience to experience on the way to your end goal.

As an adventurer? The weather can be much more of an inconvenience to an "adventurer" (which I guess has something to do with being outdoors) than to the average modern, white/blue collar worker, person.

Too cold a weather might mean that you have to be very mindful of what you are wearing and adjust it to your activity level; wear too much while you are active and you get sweaty, which means that you in turn get colder. Wear too little and you start freezing. Even changing attire between activity levels can be difficult, since you sometimes have to undress partially in order to change attires, which might be enough of a room to leave you freezing. Too cold weather might mean that your equipment stops functioning because something froze. Too cold weather might mean that you have a hard time doing anything precise with your hands, because your wooly mittens don't lend themselves to that kind of work.

Then perhaps the weather gets milder; now you have to question whether you are able to cross that river on that ice. Also perhaps beware of snow avalanches.

A lot of rain might mean that you get, you know, wet, perhaps most of the stuff you have. Now you have to carry around wet tents etc. because you didn't have time to dry anything. Perhaps you even have to go to bed in a wet sleeping bag. Good luck trying to sleep.

That is just normal weather - not even going into things like storms.

Obviously preparation is important in extreme weather. That was kind of my point. In moderate weather largely deflected by a parasoled sheet of plastic it isn't the end of societal existence

> Obviously preparation is important in extreme weather.

None of what I described was extreme, really.

Britain is a small island in the middle of a shallow sea with a warm current flowing roughly South to North and a cold jet stream flowing West to East at high altitude. Our weather depends on which way the wind is blowing and how wet the air is. Those from continental climates may find the variability refreshing!

PS: I live in the bit of the UK that isn't London. There is quite a lot of that.

> Those from continental climates may find the variability refreshing!

Continental climates have distinct seasons, (almost) by definition. That's certainly a kind of variability.

Certainly, but, in Britain, as anyone who has tried to organise a picnic or outdoor wedding or similar will know, the variability is on a time scale of hours rather than months.

PS we seem to be keen on silent downvoting again. Parent post makes a perfectly valid point that allowed me to clarify my comment (timescales).

London doesn't get awesome thunderstorms. I used to joke about the annual thunderclap. This year we've surprisingly had a few already. Neighbourly camaraderie? Open fire? Walking in the rain? Walking in puddles of engine oil? You're describing the weather experience of living in the countryside of a tropics country, not London.

I'm talking about UK weather in general. I lived in London for a year, worked there for 4 and remember many thunderstorms. Not so much neighbourly camaraderie though. If you want neighbourly camaraderie live in a village.

Nope, London doesn't have thunderstorms. Maybe they're thunderstorms by UK standards, but not by global standards, not in the 13 years I've lived here. One of the things I miss most about living elsewhere in the world is the stimulating weather. Be it big blue skies, substantial snow, bone rattling thunderstorms, lightning displays, hail storms that bring traffic to a halt. London is wishy washy. Drizzle, enough snow to make a dirty slush, a thunderclap, a single flash of lightning, hail so small that it melts away on contact. Summer in 2004 (2005?) was two weeks long. Literally. Two weeks of sun. Dreary weather. I'm desperate for the European economy to pick up so I can leave.

Much of Europe has far more boring weather than the UK.

Apparently, you're not very aware that the weather can impact your mood.