Richard Mabey, one of Britain's finest nature writers, has done something rather remarkable.
His latest book, Turned Out Nice Again (Profile, £8.99), is at the polar extreme of his best-known book, Flora Britannica, so comprehensive a tome that you could plant the seed of a giant sequoia inside its pages and the roots would not emerge for years. By comparison, this new book is little larger than a pressed leaf. Considering that Mabey's subject is the weather, I doff my deerstalker to him for resisting the urge to ramble, and instead keep to his self-appointed remit as closely as if it were the ridge of the Five Sisters of Kintail and a foot over on either side would plunge him into the abyss.
Turned Out Nice Again is Mabey's personal reflection on weather, and the part it plays in the way we think and live. As he writes in his opening chapter, weather is "the one circumstance of life which we share in common. It affects our bodies, our moods, our behaviour, the structure of our environments. It can change the cost of living and the likelihood of death. It is a kind of common language itself."
That, in brief, is a contents list of what follows. An amiable, knowledgeable, at times whimsical discussion of his subject, it is neither rocket science nor hot air. You might call it a meditation based on a lifetime's observation, itself the product of a fascination that many of us share, but few admit to.
Coming as I do from a family of weather watchers, for whom the forecast is not merely a source of information but of emotional and spiritual sustenance, not unmixed with schadenfreude, I've found it hard learning to live with a non-believer, an iconoclast, who will talk through the bulletin as if it were merely a horoscope, and can return from the newsagents, battling through winter fog and ice, and still claim it's a balmy day. Yet while he ignores isobars and frontal systems, he loves weather of every kind, so long as it's not positively life-threatening.
And who doesn't? Most of us nurture an inner weather vane from an early age, just as our tongues learn to twist themselves around the elements. Scots is a wonderfully evocative language for describing weather, especially of the hostile sort, words like dreich, haar, snell and smirr needing no translation. So, while I was disappointed that Mabey's book is mainly restricted to England, his idea of weather as a common language was intriguing. Reading poetry or novels from writers from every part of the world, it's evident that the majority still use weather as a scene-setter or, increasingly, as a subject in its own right. Here in the north we like to think we are more battered or ill-treated by the elements than most, but very few novelists create an imaginary world entirely independent of weather, even if they live in halcyon conditions.
It's far likelier, in fact, that in these hi-tech times, the modern writer will more often use weather to generate a mood, or a story, than novelists from earlier ages where rain and shine had a far greater impact on the lives of everyone, rich or poor, waterproofed or barefoot, than it does today. It may seem anomalous, but the reason for this is simple. Compared with 25 years ago when we didn't know polar bears were living on thinning ice, weather is now not just an esperanto for strangers at the bus stop but the lingua franca of fiction. Where once wars, terrorism and espionage were the mainstays of thrillers, now climate disaster is creeping into first place as the most alarming source of horror. And unlike any armed conflict or political stand-off, extreme or deleteriously changing weather is international, oblivious of borders and indiscriminate in its victims.
Like me, if you value your sleep, you may avoid such stories. But if tales of storms, floods and droughts alarm you, Mabey's thoughtful perspective on how we must in future adapt to severe weather change is as wise and intelligent as you'll find, and certainly not the stuff of schlock fiction.
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