There’s Snow Way I Am Talking About the Weather
I was once told that I shouldn’t talk about the weather as much as I do. The person doing the telling was my husband Nick, and at the time he stated that Canadians, in general, talk about the weather too much, and that it was boring.
I should further explain why it was that he was concerned about me being boring. For years, we, along with various guest musicians, did a weekly hour-long live broadcast on-line. The purpose was primarily to perform music but since there shouldn’t be too much dead-air in broadcasting, we also had to do quite a bit of talking between songs.
Nick has a load of experience in this type of thing, and he felt that the chat and jokes would be much more interesting to an audience if they were spontaneous and unrehearsed. He is a risk-taker by nature and thrives on the element of surprise. These shows were not recorded therefore once something was said, it lasted only a moment on the airwaves, so in his opinion we could say anything, as long as we were being entertaining and not offending or hurting anyone. What I realize now is that the element of surprise probably played a large part in keeping people coming back to listen to us every week.
But, I found being ready to speak live without rehearsing in advance pretty hard to do. I admit to cheating a bit, by keeping a notebook handy with a few notes jotted down on what might be interesting subjects to discuss.
I often found myself suddenly and unexpectedly having to do all of the talking for periods of time, while Nick tuned his guitar or adjusted the settings on our equipment. So, at such times, when I had to think fast, I was often tempted to turn to the weather as a topic. In Canada, with our dramatic weather extremes, there was always something to talk about.
But Nick was right in pointing out that this was boring subject matter and once he pointed out that I was doing it, I agreed to try to cut it out. Then my ‘not talking about the weather’ became an on-going joke.
As for it being a particularly Canadian thing to do, I thought he was making that part up. So I Googled the phrase “Canadians talk” and the top subject suggested by Google was indeed “about the weather”!
So, that all said, with this post, I shall not talk about the weather. Rather I’ll just show you these pictures which were taken over the past few days.
Thank you kindly for taking a look.
xo loulou
ps – I still do talk about the weather and by no means would think you were boring if you do, too. It’s an interesting topic for online discussions because it’s neat to hear about what things are like in different places around the world, or to commiserate with others in your area, when things are bad.