Why the British Talk About Weather All the Time

It’s the unpredictable overlord

Photo by Anjana Menon on Unsplash

The British are known primarily for three things (excluding Brexit, let’s forget that for a moment); the Queen, tea and talking about the weather.

I have genuinely been asked all of the following questions, unprompted, whilst abroad:

‘So, have you met the Queen?’

‘Oh, I don’t have any tea, is coffee okay?’

‘Why does it rain all the time in England?’

I get it, every country has its stereotypes but it wasn’t until I first went to the US in 2009 that I realised just how strong the stereotypes around the British are.

But here’s the thing, we do tend to turn to tea if we’re feeling happy, sad, bored, thirsty or need to start a new task. We do…well…have a Queen and she is a straight-up sensible lady. And yes, we do, at length and with alarming regularity, talk about the weather.

Let’s get some background.

British weather

Britain is, obviously, an island. So our weather is vastly dictated by what’s happening at sea. Depressions rumble about the Atlantic, bounce of the USA’s Eastern Seaboard and roll over the North Atlantic where they bump into Ireland.