Immovable Shadows

I try not to talk about the weather very much. Seeing as it’s pretty much the only safe thing to talk about anymore, it gets spoken of a lot. So I try not to make it too common of a topic on my tongue. But, as Ecclesiastes taught me, there’s a time for everything. So brace yourself… I’m about to talk about the weather.

Surprisingly, Cambridge has a semi-arid climate. However, it rains here several times a week. To this Mississippi boy who is used to a couple of hard downpours a month and sunny skies in between, a light rainy mist every other day is unusual to say the least. While it rarely pours down rain in Cambridge, it’s cloudy for six days of the week on average. Sometimes it seems as if the sky is just a blanket of clouds that never moves, casting a week-long shadow on Cambridgeshire until the next beam of sunshine dares to seep through the barricades.

There is an American military base a little ways north of town, and the U.S. military actually will not deploy you there if you have a history of depression. I think the seemingly immovable shadows that make their home across the U.K. are a big reason why British people can be so gloomy and pessimistic. When I walk down the street to class, the grocery store, or a pub, over half the people I pass have their heads down, staring at their shoes. But when the sun decides to shine on this island, it’s a different story. People are more cheerful, smiles are less endangered, and heads for the most part are up.

The dreariness of the weather here in the United Kingdom, if nothing else, has made me appreciate the sunshine more when it appears. Also, with the frequent mist showers, I see rainbows a bit more frequently here than I do back home.