18 Degrees and Cloudy

Most people are aware at some level of how the weather affects them, yet few are apparently aware of the benefits of this affecting, and seem too drawn towards the sun alone. If we considered certain meteorological events, showers, rainfall, gales, snowstorms, there would appear to be, from what I see outdoors, a certain bias towards dry sunny days without too much wind and with little or no rain.

It's curious to be sure. Even the birds will slow down when it rains, try and find a place to shelter, or just wait it out in a hunch. It's no fun being soaked the bone after all.... or is it?

In fact, when you're out cycling, it is quite fun to get soaked, especially given Scotland's temperate climate. It's not so much a soaking as it is a light drizzling, a smirr that coats the skin with a smooth and wet film. Now, when you're cycling, this can actually be quite refreshing; instead of sweating buckets and having to rehydrate, you are naturally cooled and hydrated by the weather. I mean, how cool is that? If, like me, you have lived in countries like Qatar, Libya, and Saudi Arabia, as a poor teacher of English (Scots really), then you will know what hot weather can do to you, what a lack of rainfall and cloud cover can do to the mind. There is nothing so amazing than a vital and varied weather system, and out of all the countries I have lived and worked in (England, Italy, France, Senegal, Turkey, Qatar, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kazakhstan) I can say without reservation that Scotland's is the finest and most invigorating. 

18 degrees would appear, then, for the cyclist, to be the perfect temperature, and the clouds would then appear to offer the cover from the sun that an energetic animal needs, if not a little rain to wash away the sweat. To be sure, we grow into our climates wherever we are born, but nowadays, since we are so closed off from our environments things are changing. It is important now more than ever to get into the outside and feel the weather. It gets inside you, livens you up. I always say 'double fresh' when I go cycling in the rain, for not only do you have your own hyper-organic energy to refresh you but you have also the rain. There is nothing so awake as the elementally thrashed organism, nothing quite so alive. So, take off that helmet (you don't need it) and your hi-viz clothing (you don't need that either unless you're a moth), and feel...

Electrically and chemically, writes the anthropologist John Bliebtreu in Parable of the Beast, the world passes right through us as we pass through it.