This weather
you just don’t know where you are.
I reckon it’s coming from China,
those low-price isobars aren’t made to last.
Or Russia because of the Arctic.
One day you’re freezing your arse off,
next day too hot to move.
It’s all ‘fronts’, wherever they are.
Back in my day a front was in front of you,
now, take your eyes off it
and it’s behind you,
like in the pantomime.
Meteorologists – what do they know?
You won’t see one of them doing the weeding
in weather like this.
‘Ridge of low pressure’.
I bet they use those Chinese pressure gauges.
You unpack one and a bit snaps off
and you don’t get the same reading, twice.
‘Hurricane Julie,’ ‘Typhoon George,’ ‘Tornado Wossname,’
can’t even make up their minds what to call them.
Wind going round in circles.
When I was a kid wind went one way or the other
and typhoon was a kind of tea.
I used to warm the pot and put in tea-leaves,
nowadays it’s teabags
full of sweepings off some foreign floor
India, China, who knows,
I blame Brexit.
But don’t let me get started . . .