What weather?

This is a country which celebrates its failures almost as much, if not more than, its successes: think of the Battle of Hastings; Corunna and The Charge of the Light Brigade to name but a few. It wouldn’t take much effort to think of plenty of other instances of breathtaking incompetence or mind numbing human waste which are commemorated in British song and poem. Given this negative artistic background it is hardly surprising that we grow up with a fatalistic and essentially downbeat approach to life.

No one and I mean no one, expected to win (odd word!) the venue for the 2012 Olympics. We were quite comfortable in making a lackadaisical effort to gain them with a lack lustre campaign supported in a desultory fashion with only sports fanatics sounding desperately sincere.

We would, in the normal course of events, then lose to the Bloody French, as we always do in the period since we won back their country for them. And, in the traditional manner we could then retire, hurt and bloody, to sulk about the unfairness of life; how nobody loves us; the Bloody French being the cause, yet again, of national humiliation.

When we won the games, we had to put Plan B into immediate operation: produce a silly estimate for the total cost of the games which would, within two or three months, be lost in a blizzard enhanced avalanche of wildly escalating costs so we could get back to where we are comfortable: moaning about a world class event which will show that we can still stage a spectacular disaster as befits a country with a lost empire.

I will never forget one British world sporting event which was televised around the globe where part of the opening ceremony included a cavalcade of Mini Minors. Forget ‘Doctor Who’ a Smugness of Mini Minors really is something which deserves to be experienced from behind the sofa!

I truly believe that this country has not put on a World Class Show since the Festival of Britain in 1951 – that is over half a century ago.

Like the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Festival of Britain was staged at another tipping point in the history of our country. The Great Exhibition was supposed to demonstrate our supremacy in the developed world, and was, indeed an assertion of economic might, but it could also be described as illustrating the modern resources that would soon spread throughout the world and the monopoly of economic opportunity was to be snatched away from Britain. The Great Exhibition celebrated achievement and pointed the way forwards that other countries were swift to follow and then surpass.

The Festival of Britain was a fantastic exhibition of invention and design and was, as it was intended to be, a glimpse of a Bright new World waiting at the other side of The Age of Austerity in the immediate post war world. But what was the most potent symbol of the Festival? Skylon: a hollow structure filled with light, tethered to the ground, yet seemingly not firmly, looking like some sort of ambiguous exclamation mark. It could be seen as a metaphor for the whole enterprise, as if to say here we are, but God knows where we are going next and how we are going to get there! And, of course, as one of the most popular and vibrant aspects of the Festival, it was destroyed at the end of the exhibition. How like us!

So where is all this unrelenting pessimism leading?

To a barbecue. Toni has expressed his determination to bale out the barbecue and in spite of inclement weather cook outside. As is usual at the time of the year, mornings are quite encouraging, but they lack the staying power of real climates and by the time elevenses has arrived the wintry aspect of the day is impossible to ignore.

As someone who has sunbathed in the rain (on a particularly expensive holiday in Gran Canaria when every day had to contribute to the inexorable increase in the tan) I am more than prepared to revert to national type and ‘plough on regardless’; rain, after all, will only serve to regulate the fiery intensity of rogue charcoal. Toni, however, has not been born into the same degree of national fatalism and acceptance of the unpropitious. We will see if his character has been markedly changed by his sojourn in this Cold Climate.

Grey Britain claims another soul!