The weather

When all else fails, talk or write about the weather. Here it is the middle of July and the temperatures are cool, the sky is cloudy and the wind blows and the showers arrive with depressing regularity. The forecasters have been predicting sunny days for some time now, but nothing happens. The weather does not watch or read the forecasts and presents us with its own version of what is. Predicting the local weather is much like fortune telling. Stick to a broad picture, stay with optimistic generalities, mention the sun to be in the sky in the future and the crowds will not drift to far away. They will return to be drawn by a mixture of hope and a desire to know what may happen. Is this being gullible? Do our disapointments in the forecasting failures make us angry at the forecasters? Given the lack of success you would think that the public would react but they still use the reports as fillers, as opening gambits to overcome those first awkward conversational moments. Perhaps the weather forecasts fufill a social and not a geographical function. What would we use otherwise?