Abroad thoughts from home #1

And now introducing a new occasional feature, the special guest blogspot. First up we welcome Maths Expert, from Linton:

Call me an anorak but I freely admit to being just a tiny bit obsessed about the weather. 'It's your favourite programme!' the children cry and I rush in just in time to see that it'll be cloudy in the west and slightly above average temperatures in the east. I now work at the local school as a teaching assistant and particularly like the Year 8 Geography class because we (sorry, they) are studying weather systems. 'This is so interesting!' I commented the other day as we studied cloud formations - happily establishing myself as the classroom nerd. I can tell you that Linton is a great place to spot a weather front moving in, and it gets very humid in Java.

I was once caught red-handed looking up the 5-day forecast for Dubai. 'Why?' asked Mr Maths Expert. Why not? I am also not a great person to ask how my holiday went. Instead of 'yeah it was great, bit rainy a couple of days' you will get chapter and verse of 'wet on Saturday, cleared up Sunday, hot on Monday...' As those of you who suffered my return from a dreary week in Cornwall will testify. I knew all about the effect of the jetstream during our recent long wet summer and can assure all Lintonians that we are going to have a dry Christmas.

I was discussing the beauty of Western Australia recently and declared that, however lovely, I would never live there. The reason? The weather's just a bit too, well... samey. At least here, for the next few years at least, we still get windy Novembers, crispy Decembers and one week of sun somewhere around mid-July. The UK snow last made a significant appearance around about 1979 and this winter is set to be wet and windy (again). Not so for Albany, where the snow will lay deep and crisp and even for about 4 months. My only worry for our friends across the Atlantic is that one wintry day in December they will lose their snow shovel and disappear completely until April.