Scottish Weather - Lesson two.

Well this is getting very technical so I hope you have all been studying hard because I will be asking questions later.
Ok so we have basically covered the major points of water and wind. There is a lot more to it but we'll come back to that at a future lesson.

Just now I want to introduce a third factor - temperature. Most of you will have heard that well known Scottish expression - Its bloody freezin. Actually this is the anglicised version. No true Scot would actually use the word bloody in this context. To do so they would risk being taken for a real sassenach. The true Scot would say I'm fuckin freezin. However even this is not strictly true. there is an unwritten rule in Scotland that one must never - ever - admit to being affected by the temerature. It is acceptable of course to admit to being affected by water, so, for example "help I'm fuckin droonin" (excuse me sir but I appear to be drowning) is perfectly acceptable. Equally one can admit to having been affected by wind either of the personal or climactic kind. So for example statements of the form "Fuck me, d'ye smell that yin?" or " Oor dad wiz blown awa" will often be heard. So if you do hear someone say I'm fuckin freezin then you should suspect that their ancestors may not be wholly Scottish. It is interesting to compare Scottish usage in this respect with Geordie custom (people from Newcastle). In Newcastle it is customary for young ladies to wear less clothes at night the colder the weather gets and to do so without complaint.

To return to our third factor then. Temperature. This comes in three basic variants. Mildly cold, very cold and freezin. (remember never to admit personally to being freezin).
Each of the combinations that we discussed in Lesson One can be found in each of the three of these temperature variants. So for example we may have mildly cold windy water or freezin windy water.
As you can begin to see the variation in the Scottish climate is endless. More of this in the next lesson when I also hope to begin to look at aspects of Scottish culture.

Scottish weather - Lesson one.

The weather today? Damp. Well actually it's a little more than damp today I would say its verging more towards wet. I should explain the Scottish climate to those poor people among you who are not fortunate enough to live in this place we call Scotland.
The Scottish climate consists basically of two main things. The first of these is water. It is very important to have a good grasp of all things watery if you want to understand Scotland. I'll explain more of this later. The second important thing is Wind. Wind comes in two forms - personal wind otherwise known as farts and climactic wind. In these early posts we will restrict ourselves to considering the climactic kind. Usually in Scotland these two things - wind and water - are found together in combination but they can also happen independently. So as you may guess we can have a number of possible permutations;

1) Water on its own. This comes in a number of forms; Mist, fog, drizzle, shit rain (sorry excuse my spelling that should be sheet rain.)

2)Wind on its own. This also comes in a number of varieties; windy, gale, storm, and hurricane.

3) Windy water. This combination occurs when the water component is more important than the windy component. So the rain may be lashing down , or we may have driving rain. Windy water may also be used as description of the weather on Scottish beaches. (more on this later)

4) Watery wind. This combination occurs when the predominant factor is wind but with some water. This is frequently hard to distinguish from combination 3. Why? because one minute it will be pishing down then a minute later it may be driving rain then still later it may be fucking pouring down.

I should, for the sake of accuracy, point out that there is technically a fifth combination. This combination - no water, no wind - is I understand technically known as sunshine. We have heard rumours of such a climatic condition and indeed I have friends who claim to have experienced this however I am not inclined to believe them. Personally I believe that this is one of those theoretical constructs that sounds good on paper when the equations are worked out but which is never really encountered in real life. However if any reader has encountered this condition in Scotland we would be interested to hear from you.
More later.