Fire and Ice

I have often said I much prefer being too hot than too cold. My theory is that I can get rid of hot in various ways, but not get rid of cold. So it goes without saying that warm, sunny days are precious to me, especially since I moved to the UK , where the most common weather conditions are cold and dark. Summer is all-too brief in the UK , with perhaps two months that have the possibility of ‘nice’ weather (i.e. sunny and warm) but rarely is the weather good for anything longer than a week or so. Things quickly revert to the more usual conditions of cool and cloudy, if not actually cold and raining. So for someone like me, that really doesn’t enjoy cold days, the very few nice days are something to cherish, to make the most of, to really enjoy to the max… except that these same warm and sunny days are also the days that bring out my hayfever. AH isn’t that a kick in the teeth?! So basically I suffer so much on these gorgeous days that sometimes I find mys...

I was one of the lucky ones – I grew up in a place where it was warm and sunny most of the time, sometimes very hot and rarely uncomfortably cold. During the summer the sun would actually be out all the time, we could count on dry days and the weather was basically never an issue. As you know I moved to the UK a few years ago and basically this is a country that has never really embraced me. From the dismal weather to the uninspired food to the cultural shock, it hasn’t been very easy to love the place. The biggest issue for me is the weather – as I see it it’s 11 months of waiting for summer and one month of huge disappointment, with a few rare sunny days overall. It’s very frustrating. What’s the worst part? When the sun DOES come out and the weather is pleasant I just want to run outside and spend as much time as possible enjoying the sun, the warmth, the lovely feeling of not being cold… but I can’t. The final insult in this sorry saga is that in the UK I have also develo...