The best gift for England ever

The weather in the Northeast is like a teenager. Not the kind of teenager who violently explodes at the least provocation, then dances about in an extraordinarily bright mood before falling into deep, dark doldrums. No, the weather here is not extreme enough for that (that's more like the monsoon days we encountered in Cambodia). Instead, it's like a hormonal youth whose moods are incrementally but constantly changing, so that you never know quite what you're going to encounter.

Thus, the tiny umbrella I received from my sister for Christmas is by far the most useful gift I received this Christmas. It is so tiny I don't notice it in my bag, but it's always there for when the weather changes. And it does all the time. I can leave Durham on a rainy morning, get off the train in sunny Newcastle, enter the office in drizzle, and sit down to a sunshine-filled window. I watch the clouds from my office window in awe- they move from one side of the window to the other in the time it takes to read this sentence. It's amazing how quickly the weather changes. In some ways it's nice- you can leave expecting a cloudy day and get a sunny-cloudy-misty-sunny one instead. Sometimes it's more mysterious: drops/flakes still seem to fall even with no clouds in sight. (Yes, this has happened at least three times to us.)

The only down side to the umbrella is that its color, carefully chosen for Aunt Megan by my 2- and 4-year-old nephews, clashes terribly with another great Christmas gift (from my my mother-in-law) shown in the photo: a red coat. Oh well, the weather changes fast.




By the way, here are some examples of the weather from the free paper I pick up each morning. I like the one symbol for rain/cloud/sun. Also note that it's about 20 miles from Durham to Newcastle... so all those different symbols/temps are within a half hour of each other! I don't know why they bother- the weather is always the same: always different.