Love Sunshine

Everywhere I go (I take the weather with me)

I'm back (in all senses). I can now confess the real reason for the rather up-beat, spring-in-my- stride, tone of my most reason posts. Yes the interminable fog of the summer had lifted; yes, we had a few late-vintage scorchers as meagre consolation for the insult that was summer; but this was all bolstered by a sneaky flit I was planning for mid October. So off I flitted and have now (alas) returned from a week in Crete - the southernmost island in Greece, and nearly the most southerly part of Europe.

I know what you're expecting: to hear of the torrential downpours that greeted me, the freak blizzards cutting off the beaches for exactly a week, and of my agonies of a holiday spent under a damp parasol drowning in gin. You'd be right to expect such things, because I sure as hell did. I'm not generally a superstitious chap, but I am when it comes to the weather. And I'm seriously beginning to think I'm cursed. In fact, it's only a matter of time before the Met Office ask me to notify them of my holiday plans as a pretty sure indication of the ghastly weather that part will surely experience while I'm there.

So, you can appreciate, it was with some trepidation that I boarded the plane last Tuesday from, of course, blue skies at Gatwick on my final attempt to get some sun for the year. Why do I not consult a forecast for my destination? To understand why I don't is to peer into the swirling cauldron of unreason and petulence that is my head when it comes to the weather. Because if I did, and discovered it was anything less than wall-to-wall sunshine, I'd be in two minds about boarding the plane. I've paid for sunshine, I demand sunshine, I expect nothing less. It's part of the excitement of going. Consequently my flights are interesting affairs for all concerned. I immediately read the signs. The pilot will generally mention the weather at destination as part of his spiel. It comes after the flight time, and the time difference at destination. This is no true indication. They lie. Yes they do. In the same way they preserve this fiction that people are able to sit back, relax, enjoy your flight (in a space that would contravene international animal welfare rights if you were a chicken, gripped with terminal boredom, discomfort and frustration), they want to manage our expectations very carefully. To the expert/ pessimist, their lies are transparent. 'I'll up date you later on the weather at destination' = it's pissing down, and if I were you I'd stay at home. 'The weather is a rather pleasant x degrees, with a light breeze, and some scattered clouds' = it's completely overcast, but muggy. Not mentioning it at all is ominous and can mean anything from hurricanes to locusts. Or it can mean he's forgotten. I can hope he's forgotten, and spend the rest of the flight staring out of the window.

Thence commences the white-knuckle ride that is my flight, with my face glued to the porthole willing the clouds to disperse and reveal the eldorado bellow. The clouds thicken. I tense up. How far left to go? They thin, disperse, disappear. I relax a bit. Can we just put down there please? They thicken again as we get closer. Can't we go just that bit further til we've lost 'em. And so on. No doubt many a neighbour has noticed my torments and feared the worst. Why is that guy so anxious? Sweating and mumbling to himself? Oh God, perhaps he's a suicide bomber, saying his final prayer before he…

To touch down under anything but glorious blue robs me of one of the chief pleasures: that extraordinary embrace of home coming when the warm air first hits you on leaving the plane. This has happened often, and it happened this time. Oh yes, Crete was overcast, and so was I. Here we go again, thought I and was simply intolerable for the first evening. Then comes the next ritual. The first moment of consciousness on the first morning. I'm quite an expert on that too. The light filtered through blinds, the time, the orientation of the hotel, how built up it is are all factored in before I summon up the courage tiptoe over and verify my worst fears....

I'll draw a veil now over the tantrums, the torments and teenage behaviour Dr Robert Mighall age 41 displays on such occasions. You don't want to know, and I'm not proud. Generally it comes out ok. It will lift by lunch time (as it did last week). The devils will give up their sport with me, I will find what I have been seeking and all is well with the world. Until next time. Christmas in Morocco. Booked last week. And it all starts again...