Talking about the weather

How much do you talk about the weather? Chances are it's highly related to where you live. So I'm going to talk about the weather now, well, more specifically, how you talk about the weather in Australia, England and Israel.

Talking about the weather. Part 1. Australia.

Australians love to talk about the weather. Every time I speak to my parents the conversations always include a weather report, and every email I receive mentions the weather. Perhaps my family is more weather focused, as my dad is a sailor and spends a lot of time at sea, but I would say it is not unusual to talk about the weather at the start of every conversation with someone you know well or only slightly. Aussies talk about the weather a lot. We do live in a country with the most variable weather in the world, where nothing is normal from year to year – where you can live your whole life in a 20 year drought for it to be broken by months of flooding rain that destroy everything you own, or the hottest day ever brings 47 degrees C and bushfires that cause unbelievable destruction, or the biggest cyclone in centuries flattens everything around. We're talking extreme weather, that is only becoming worse with climate change. It is hard to be a climate change denialist when you live in Australia, when with every extreme weather event people say it must be climate change.

The Australian weather nerd

I worked with some extreme weather nerds in Canberra. Extreme weather nerd behaviour includes:

• closely monitoring the rain gauge in your garden, plotting the results for the season, comparing it to seasonal averages etc.
• listening to all news weather reports. If you hear there is rain coming, you jump onto the Bureau of Meterology's website for the infamous weather radar, watching hopefully for patches of red
• calling all your friends or running to see them when you see a red colour on the radar, representing lots of rain
• getting jealous of all the red on the radar over north queensland in summer.

Now this extreme weather behaviour I witness (and participated in) was obviously the result of the long period of drought Canberra was in. Considering it rained constantly last winter, I'm not sure if such behaviour continues, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it does... (and this behaviour may also be related to many of these weather nerds living on farms/keeping gardens/being ecologists...

Talking about the weather. Part 2. England

Talking about the weather had never seemed that strange to me until I moved to England, where the weather is discussed on an entirely different level – the English talk about the weather all the time. With everyone. All day, every day. And the weather in England is always: Grey or greyer, wet or wetting, windy or windier, cold or colder. One day a year the sun comes out, and it's talked about all year.

A typical day of ones life in England:

7am. Wake up. Look out the window. Grey. Listen to the weather report on the radio. Grey and cold. Discuss the grey weather with your partner/housemates.

8am. Go to the bus stop, noticing the weather. Talk to the person next to you at the bus stop. About the weather

9am. Arrive at work. Say Good Morning. “Grey day today isn't it” you say to your colleague

9.10am. Make tea. Talk to another colleague. “It's rather grey outside today isn't it. When is the sun going to come out”, you say...

10.30am. Morning tea meeting with other colleagues. “How about this weather we're having, there is no end to this grey is there! When will the sun appear?”

I'm not going to continue. As you see, for the first 4.5 hours of the day you've talked about the weather 5 times with at least 5 different people. In one day, you probably discuss the weather 20 times, with almost every single person you talk with. Talk about taking the discussion of weather to an entirely new level. It's completely ingrained in the culture. I think that if an Englishman moved to Israel, where every day for 5 months is almost exactly the same: hot, humid, 30 degrees, he would still talk about the weather every single day (but only with other Englishmen...).

Talking about the weather. Part 3. Israel

Which brings me to Israel. I started working in an Israeli company, and in the tea room I met many people that I know barely. And I naturally talked about the weather with almost all of them. Well I did, until I mentioned it to my Israeli friend who said, “If you talk about the weather with an Israeli, they will think you have nothing else to say, and that you are a boring person”. Israelis do not talk about the weather. Well, it does come up in conversation, but it is way down the list. But then, there is little reason to talk about the weather, for a few reasons:

1. The weather here is boring. In Summer it is exactly the same weather for 5 months. And there is absolutely no rain for those 5 months either. In the winter people do wonder where the rain is, but not very much.
2. People ask about people here, how they are, are they sick, are they married/having babies yet, are they enjoying life. There is very little small talk. People are direct with their questions and answers and open with their feelings.
3. There are bigger things to worry about. Terrorism, war, security. The Middle East peace process. Will Israel still exist in 50 years time? Big questions, big insecurities, and the weather doesn't really rate there. No one talks about climate change. I've never seen an Israeli newspaper mention it. Life is stressful here, and there is no interest in talking about the weather.

The Israelis are in line with the Crowded House song that starts:

      “No time, no place to talk about the weather

       The promise of love is hard to ignore...”

More info

Talking about the weather falls into the small talk basket. Small talk is called phatic communication, and is considered a social skill.

This BBC article on the differences between British and German small talk – the Germans don't even have a word for small talk. And Hebrew doesn't really have a word for it either. 

Talking about the weather in Australia vs. Indonesia: 

This blog post  talks about how social media is changing phatic communication.

And here is an American guy discussing how to talk about the weather.

England

A few weeks ago, Amit and I went on a one week trip to England. I lived in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne four years ago for 15 months, so the main aim of the trip was to go and visit my great friends there.

The first thing that struck me was that I could understand what everyone around me was saying! I was flooded with voices, other people's conversations, advertisements on walls, shop signs. I'm used to turning off all these distractions in Israel, easy to do because they are mostly in Hebrew.

I just loved walking into Boots pharmacy and seeing all these familiar brands, and so much variety! Israel has most things of course, but it is a small country compared with the UK and Europe so it doesn't quite get the variety.

The architecture in the cities really shocked me as well. I'd forgotten what it looked like, all the intricate details make it so interesting to look up to from the street. I have talked before about how I love the buildings in Tel Aviv, in all their dilapidated glory and minimalist lines, but seeing English architecture reminded me of my love for living history, as seen in buildings that line the streets of London and Newcastle.

Amit on Grey St, Newcastle. Beautiful buildings. From England

We had fun shopping in the mega clothes stores, eating the delightful English cuisine (sausages, bacon, pies, sausage rolls, roast lunch, curry), drinking beer, seeing all the greenery, walking till our feet hurt, and of course seeing friends.

There is nothing quite like seeing old friends. It's like those four years never really happened, and we've been transported to a meeting where we still know each other super well, but we've had all the experiences in between to make our conversations even more interesting! Amit loved meeting my old friends too, as we're both all about the people, and he didn't mind that I dragged him around England meeting 20 people in 7 days.

Nita and Ken took us on a road trip through the Northumberland countryside to the beautiful Belsay Hall - a fantastic mixture of historic house, castle and gardens, with an amazing art exhibition exploring the impact of scale.

Enjoying the green at Belsay. From England

It was a strange experience going back to somewhere overseas that I once lived. I remember when I thought that the culture there was normal, it was part of my everyday life. I remembered the streets I walked on everyday, I remember the music I was listening to, I remember the people I knew there. All sorts of things. But in those four years since living in England I've experienced so many things that have led to me living in Israel with my man. Walking through the streets of Newcastle four years ago I could never have predicted moving to Israel! I also felt that I am living in the right place. Tel Aviv is the place for me.

Upon returning to Israel two thoughts dominated my mind:
1) I need to eat some Israeli salad!
2) I missed hearing and speaking Hebrew, strangely enough. The trip made me realise that speaking another language is an exciting thing, and I've been spurred on to study more Hebrew now.

A slide show of our England photos...