Dang I feel down today. Down down down. I’m here in Manchester devising a show for the Lyric Hammersmith. Like the beginnings of most creative projects there’s a birthing process.  Manchester where yes it is grey and yes it is rainy and yes it is dark, is slightly depressing?  I dunno. It isn’t the city.   It’s a beautiful city with some incredible people. And truthfully,   it isn’t the weather either. . Weather is neither good or bad. It is weather. It doesn’t do anything wrong to be bad or right to be good. It should be celebrated, water in rain is noursihment for life.  To call it bad weather is just plain wrong. Why would there be rainbows if  rain was “bad”. Up to seventy percent of our body is water why would we hate it falling from the sky. Bad weather. October approaches like a shadow inside a trenchcoat across the diseased furrowed fields of england, while  the weather men and weather women will be talking of  this “bad weather” and “grey depressing showers” along with “a cold front”.  Their faces will grimace in an english apology as if to say “sorry but he’s coming with a raging pack of black dogs”. They  preempt, no they encourage,  Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD).  Jeez give us all a break!!   I can hear him banging on the door. It is a slow and deliberate knock. He’s not coming in! 

Seventy percent of the earths surface is covered by the Water.  I’d rather the weather men and women told me  how lucky we are to see water spin its way from the skies, the ultimate in recycling; an example of modenity and self  sufficience – a survivor who wears rainbows like trinkets.  I know that is a bit over the top. But that  it is termed as Good Weather or Bad weather  subliminally attaches emotion to it – we have split those emotions into two opposing cells assuming one to be negative and one positive. Let’s not blame for our failings on  the falling of water and the gathering of  its deliverers, the clouds. Bad weather?  What is it?  It was here before we were.  Weather is the greatest gift of the human race whether we choose to like it or not.. 

An Alien would see weather men and women as soothesayers – who had been bought up by news corporations to control the mood of a nation. There is no such thing as bad weather and no such thing as  good weather. We should demand more descriptive language for this ever changing. The swedes have got it right.    In Sweden they say “there is no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing”.  Says it all really.