Yesterday was a perfect example of the ‘Reverse Lancaster Lid’, an under-researched but recognisable meteorological effect: usually, as you head north on the West Coast main line, even on the sunniest of days, you will hit a ceiling of cloud at Lancaster or thereabouts. I first noticed the phenomenon when I was a writer-in-residence at Grasmere for the Wordsworth Trust. With the ‘Reverse Lid’, however, the train emerges, at some point north of Preston, into brilliant sunshine and clear skies. I mention this only because I’m interested in how the weather and the seasons affect our moods, and even how we write.

 

I feel slightly cheated if there have been no thunderstorms at either end of this (appalling) summer. The last couple of days have felt like the change in the seasons, and sometimes you can expect a storm to usher out the light nights, and mirror the thunder of May or June (which we did have: I was caught out in a storm on a reed bed earlier this year). Autumn seems to have arrived, after a short Indian summer, suddenly, with cold damp air from a different direction. Though there’s still hope for electrical effects. Writing in the winter of 1784, Gilbert White reports: ‘I must not omit to tell you that, during those two Siberian days, my parlour-cat was so electric, that had a person stroked her, and been properly insulated, the shock might have been given to a whole circle of people.’

 

Staring into the gloom and length of winter, this isn’t my favourite time of the year. I’m supposed to be doing a ‘drive time’ show later today for a radio station in Merseyside, which means I can say something nice to my father-in-law in hospital. Though I’m not sure he’ll be up to listening just yet, it’s a chance to say thanks to various people.