Bright spells with Heavy Showers and the occasional risk of Flooding: Reclections on the Summer that Didn't Happen

We've recently finished a 6 month stint of living in the middle of Manchester City Centre and I feel compelled to reflect on our time spent in the city. The six months we resided in Manchester comprised of 2012's calendar months of spring and summer. Climatically it was one of the more interesting of British Summers, as will be explained throughout this post. It must be said at this point that the British are generally a race of people who crave the sun and chase it. The basis of many holidays is purely on warmth and sunshine. Spanish resorts hum to the sound of sun-worshiping Brits. They laze by the sea or pool while drinking cheap lager and cocktails as they burn to a shade of orange that a tanning bed cannot produce.

We became residents of Manchester in March. The month was a good example of how bright and warm it can potentially get in Britain. March of 2012 was the third hottest of that calendar month recorded across the UK and warmest since the 1957 edition. Other statistics included it being the fifth driest and third sunniest March - total sunlight hours - on record. It's too easy to dismiss the UK as being perpetually wet, cold and damp, but I nearly got sunstroke on my first visit to London. So, yes, it is possible for the country to warm up.

March, being the first month of spring, gave the British public optimism of a bright and warm six months ahead. And these six months included some of the biggest events possible squeezed into the calendar. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, The Olympics, Paralympics, Wimbledon and the Euro 2012 soccer cup were all the big headline acts for summer 2012. Our local village green had a large video screen that was ready to celebrate all of these events and promote the outdoor lifestyle that the spring and summer months enable. The same venue had a program of outdoor movies to be hosted on Thursday nights.

While the weather was causing excitement and optimism throughout the public it was tempered by a backdrop of drought throughout regions of England. Those of us from Australia and countries of similar climates may find it amusing that Britain, the perceived undisputed heavyweight champion of miserably wet weather, could possibly be mentioned in the same sentence as the word 'drought'. But the winter of 2011/12 was a dry one by historical standards, as was the prior one. The year of 2011 was the UK's driest in 90 years. There was much fear from the government and water management bodies that a dry winter wasn't a good eve to a potentially water-hungry summer. To mitigate this, water restrictions were implemented throughout many of the worst affected areas of the country. Then came April.

Throughout March we would often open the balcony doors, enjoying the warmth and watching the diners at the alfresco furniture below as they gave the restaurants much needed business. Within the first few days of April I was looking out through the same doors as a dusting of snow was falling past our Central Manchester windows. And the furniture that was so popular a week before was scattered by wild winds like the aftermath of a Wild West pub fight. It became a running joke that I'd often report that there were no outdoor diners below our apartment...as it would be lashing down with rain. After the tease and promise of March this was all very sobering indeed.

                                                                                                                                

It was only after we ended up living in the middle of Manchester that I learnt of its nickname of the Rainy City. Rather than fill me with dread it made me feel a special kinship as my hometown of Melbourne is often given the same name. This was a year where Manchester lived up to its name. It happened to be the wettest summer in 100 years.  The average temperatures throughout Manchester averaged 14.7 degrees throughout summer.      

The weather brings with it a different set of practicalities. As much as I try to be of the 'soldier on and wear a raincoat' brigade sometimes that doesn't quite cut it. I had grand plans of using summer to explore the nearby countryside including the wonderful Peak District. But as much as you tell yourself to carry on regardless in spite of what nature serves up it's hard to be motivated or inspired when rain was a feature. One of my interests is in a product that there's an infinite selection of in Britain: beer. A news story made me take great interest in the village of Hebden Bridge, North East of Manchester within the boundaries of West Yorkshire. Aside from being declared the Lesbian Capital of the UK, its other claim is the Little Valley Brewery. The brewery works alongside the monks of Ampleforth Abbey who have recommenced brewing some strong beer for the first time in 450 years or so. Alas. it seemed that my interest in visiting Hebden Bridge was shelved as the town was mostly flooded throughout summer.

The weather also has huge economic implications. The strange climate of summer 2012 is not one that the current austerity economy wanted. The restaurants below our apartment were hungry for customers that weren't turning up to dine alfresco. And the outdoor cinema more amusingly was the local outdoor summer cinema season that we had looked forward to. Ironically, I think one of the few sessions that weren’t washed out was the screening of Singing in the Rain. 

We recently stayed in a B&B where the lady running it gave some insight into the impact the weather forecast can have. We visited over a long-weekend when the owners expected it to be fully booked, but the uncertain weather forecast seemed to spook the prospective customers she believed – a pattern that had been typical throughout summer. It had its moments, but the weather over the long-weekend was warm and sunny for the most part, in spite of the weather forecasts of flooding and wild storms – which did happen elsewhere, mind you. This negative speculating has had a great impact on a struggling tourist market. The B&B landlady told us of a number of large businesses contemplating a class action against the Met Office Weather Bureau for their part in revenue dipping up to 1/3^rd on last year.

I have developed a particular fascination for the fine art of weather forecasting here. I have noticed that you can take the four-day forecasts of several sources and each one can vary greatly between the four days. I even started to take the average across the various news and weather sites. Some newspaper web sites don't even list the weather forecast - have they gotten it too wrong too many times? I have made a table below that highlights the disparity in weather forecasting for Manchester.

	Weds	Low	High	Thurs	Low	High	Fri	Low	High	Sat	Low	High
Manchester Evening News	A shower	8	13	Spotty Showers	10	15	Rather Cloudy	7	15	More Clouds than Sun	10	13
BBC	Light Rain Shower	10	14	Heavy Rain	11	14	Light Rain Shower	6	13	Heavy Rain	10	13
The Guardian	Sunny with Showers	8	14	Showers	8	15	Mostly Cloudy	7	14	Mostly Cloudy	8	15
The Met Office	Light Shower Day	8	14	Light Rain	10	13	Light Rain	9	12	Sunny Day	8	13
Sky News	Light Rain	9	14	Light Rain	9	15	Sunny	6	14	Sunny Intervals	9	15

The BBC news service provides two levels of news - the national/international coverage and the more localised content relevant to your region, whether it be London, the Midlands or the North West of England as we were in Manchester. The weather also gets the two-tiered treatment. I have noticed two things about the BBC television weather coverage. The presenters seem so friendly that you couldn't turn them away from the door if they came to sign you up to a lifetime subscription of Readers' Digest. They're often Scottish or Irish ladies with the warmest accent that you could listen to all day. I suspect that this is to counter my second observation; the forecasts are usually brutally honest or otherwise gloomy. There could be a day when not a single piece of cloud is visible across mainland Britain, yet a light shower occurring off the coast of the Faroe Islands is something to keep an eye on in case it develops.

Throughout the disappointment of summer, the media offered some optimism. There were reports of an 'Indian Summer' arriving in September. I'm writing this post in late September from the middle of Manchester. I can tell you that any hope of this Indian summer has well and truly been taken out the back and euthanised. Today is the third consecutive day of constant heavy rain - enough to bring September's average monthly rainfall in 24 hours. There are currently 23 flood warnings and 118 alerts scattered across the country. Furthermore, 3 unfortunate people have died as a result of the rain and winds over the last day. So it's highly unlikely that there's going to be any 'Indian Summer' between now and winter.

The people of Manchester seem to fall in two distinct groups as far as the rain goes. The first group tend to overuse words like 'crap' and lament that they're not in Spain, Florida, Australia, the Bahamas or anywhere else warmer and drier than here. The second group are resolute realists who believe that Manchester is to be accepted as it is and people should adapt and love its rainy days accordingly. I believe that the climate has a part to play in the character of the Manchurians. As is the case in my '4 seasons in one day' hometown of Melbourne, the weather and climate provide a ready-made topic of discussion and humour. I fell into the 'embrace the drenching rain' camp myself. To me I cannot imagine Manchester without rain after experiencing one of its finest years. 

Incorporated into the Manchester coat of arms is the emblem of the worker bee – a nod to the industrious nature of the people who built this pioneering industrial city. I finish this post by recommending my nomination for an alternative emblem. On days of heavy rain the evening peak hour would be pock-marked with a familiar scene - litter bins stuffed with the day’s casualties of countless dead umbrellas competing for space, jutting out like a TV aerial cum public art installation. To me it sums up the Manchester of 2012.

A return to Where it all Began and the Horrors of Commercialisation

Given that I have spent about 95% of the last 6 months in the middle of Manchester it was a tonic to travel along the A49 to appreciate how much countryside is left in this comparatively small island. I imagine that there's a great deal of pressure to turn parts of this lovely countryside into the next New Town or such. Personally I think that it would be a step too far - and in the wrong direction - in the progress of the country.

My first visit to this country was as a fortunate house-sitter in the lovely part of the world that is Stratford-upon-Avon. I spent roughly four and a half months over Winter of 2002/03 living and working as a local in what has long been a tourist town, at least ever since it was realised that there was money in the legacy of a man with the surname Shakespeare. 

I have fond memories of Stratford. Aside from it being the place I met my partner in crime, Laura, it was also a great part of the country to be based as an introduction to life in the UK. It was also the England that we read about, saw photos of and expected - not just from the Shakespeare and Tudor angle either. I got excited over the novelty value in things that were interesting to me but the everyday - even a nuisance - for the Stratfordian natives. As much as I loved the sight of seeing the River Avon turn into a block of ice for weeks the people in the canal boats probably saw it differently. Similarly, the sight of cars sliding along an icy Bridgefoot was comical for me, but the drivers, I dare say, didn't share the same sense of glee as their bumpers nudged.

Although I was only resident for about 4.5 months, I very much felt like a local: I made friends, became a familiar face around town, enjoyed good banter with people who worked in the stores and the neighbours. It also occurred to me recently that perhaps I became too much like a local. I'm a firm believer in that most of us take our own city, county/state and country for granted and don't see if as visitors do. We're just about to end a six month stay in the middle of Manchester and I can already see a roll call of places that we should have gotten around to visiting and things we should have done over this time. 

So, given that I was a local of Stratford-upon-Avon I managed to avoid surrounding myself in the cult of William Shakespeare. I remember that one of the productions of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company during my sabbatical was lead by Ralph Fiennes before he became Voldemoort. Alas, I have no idea what the interior of the riverside theatre looks like. I didn't even visit any of the relevant Shakespeare houses. The closest I came to this was that I'd often eat my lunchtime Vegemite sandwiches on a bench across from where Shakespeare was supposedly born. 

So Laura and I returned to Stratford and the region the first time since that winter. 2012 also happens to be the year where the William Shakespeare factor has been amped up to 11 for the World Shakespeare Festival, which piggy-backs on the Olympics, Queen's Jubilee and other events going on this year. 

Stratford-upon-Avon has probably made cash from William Shakespeare since people would have flogged knock-offs of his classics outside the original riverside theatre when it was built in the 1800s. I remember the town had the usual souvenir shops overflowing with the usual parade of postcards and tea-towels when I stayed here over 2002/03. But things are a little different now. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre has been given a face-lift over the last several years. Part of this renovation includes a generous souvenir shop to walk through to access the theatre ticket desk. This store is dwarfed by one in the main town area. Between the two of them they sell anything you could and couldn't conceive of being attached to William Shakespeare and his works. It would not have surprised me to have seen a cricket set with 'To bowl or to bat, that is the question' painted over it or a Frisbee with Shakespeare himself on it.

We initially booked a couple of nights in the motel near Stratford and Warwick for a stay back in May, but other arrangements dictated that we change the dates. The nearest available dates of comparable price happened to be the August Bank Holiday weekend, an occasion I was oblivious to at the time. As it turned out, a long weekend in Britain plus anything above average weather results in hordes of people escaping their houses or coming out from underground. I find that many people are seemingly absent from the country when the weather is being its usual self. 

It's funny that the only time I saw Stratford in such an overrun state during my stay was on the day I said goodbye to it on a warm, sunny day at the cusp of Spring. The population multiplied upon exposure to sunshine and warmth after hibernating through a quiet winter. The combination of the long weekend plus the generally nice weather equaled people, many of them.

At first I couldn't quite think of what it was that made the modern Stratford different to the one I experienced over that winter. It took a while for the familiarity to form, but that wasn't it. I think it was seeing the town more busy than I had ever experienced it while living there that. For nostalgia's sake we wandered through the camping store where I worked while being a citizen of Stratford which was busy like the rest of the town. I remember working on Saturdays and Sundays while snow dusted the high street and you could count the store's daily customers on one hand.

The day after our trip down memory lane in Stratford we visited Warwick Castle in the nearby town of ...Warwick. Although I ignored the William Shakespeare phenomenon of Stratford, I had fond memories of a visit to the castle that was marketed on the fact that it was the country's largest/most in-tact example of a grand castle. The 2012 version of the same castle is a little different though. Yes, the structural castle is still there as it has been for centuries of course. But the focus is a little different from the heritage and history angle that used to suffice. 

I remember that there was a tower of the castle where there were interpretive notes indicating that it was the most haunted area of the castle and one could feel a certain chill walking through and imagining the horrors that occurred within the fortress. Any ghosts that may have existed in the tower have since been kicked out by Merlin the Wizard and the dragons he combats in the BBC television program. The 15 minute trip through the tower promises the possibility of speaking to the dragon itself. This interaction can be made possible with the purchase of a ticket in addition to the standard ticket which is overpriced as it is.

For the price the families and tourists are paying at the gate it would be a fair assumption to think that much would be included once you're in the castle's grounds. There were jousting recreations and falconry displays, mock-dead rat tossing and annoying jesters that were included in the ticket price. That was probably the extent of the ticket value. If your child wanted to indulge in archery with a crudely constructed bow it cost £3 for them to shoot off half a dozen arrows aimlessly while they were innocently oblivious to the half an hour of minimum wage it takes to raise such funding. Similar costings were applied to shield and face painting.

I have photos of my original visit to Warwick Castle where it could have been any day over the last several centuries. Given that I visited in winter it was mostly absent of the marauding hordes that invaded on the recent Bank Holiday weekend which provided nice photos absent of stray heads and unwanted figures. Aside from the people, there were also no hot dog stalls, costly dungeon tours, sword construction and other sideshows to distract from the grand example of this country's history that surrounds you.

The blatant commercialisation of the attraction saddened me and cheapened the day. It was hard to enjoy something that was purely there to generate money against the backdrop of a valued piece of the history that is a cornerstone of this island. Yes, money makes the 21st century go around, but there is a limit where it becomes tacky and tasteless. Warwick Castle seemed to take the medieval swords and axes to this limit and the place has forgotten what it is. As an outsider it is not what the genuine tourist wants or expects to see. I'd much rather feel the history of any ghosts of people who may or may not have been beheaded in a tower instead of paying to meet Merlin and his dragons.