O.K., so I've taken my shot at the overcast weather. Hope it didn't sound suicidal or anything. But I can pull us back from the brink. Humans can get used to pretty much anything, and yes, I've gotten used to endless overcast days. Came to accept it.
Even came to crave it. Here's why: When it's overcast, you get a lot done.
We've all felt this way. Think back to when you were a kid and it was a rainy day, and you weren't at school or anything, so you had the whole day to play. Didn't you get that really ambitious, creative, constructive feeling? The one where you suddenly wanted to take on a big project: build a Lego town, design your own board game, write a story, create an elaborate scenario with your dolls and action figures. And you’re kind of glad it's raining because you're supposed to be inside doing this. If it was sunny you would feel obligated to enjoy the sunshine and summer or something.
On most days here in Sheffield I have a whole lot to do, stuff that I look forward to: a full platter of reading, writing, interviewing, and thinking. I'm eager to leave my flat, get to the university library, and hunker down to work. But if I step outside to the rare day of blues skies and sunshine, I'm now actually disappointed, thinking "damn, now I have to stay outside today and walk everywhere and go to the botanical garden because it's so beautiful out, and I won't get anything done."
And maybe that's why England and Ireland have such great literature. For me, this is will always be the very best feature of the U.K.: their love for words and wit and poetry and prose and beauty and expression, all of which turns into some damn fine works. And is it any surprise? They were stuck inside on rainy days with nothing but pen and paper and their own creativity. Mary Shelley is a perfect example. As the story goes, at age 19 she was vacationing with a bunch of writers, and one day it started to rain so they were all stuck inside with nothing to do. So Lord Byron (the famous poet) said they each should think up a story. Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein, which later became her most famous book. She thought the story because it was raining. It's not a stretch to say if there was no rain that day, we'd have no Frankenstein. She explained, "I busied myself to think of a story, - a story to rival those which had excited us to this task." That's what you do when it rains, you busy yourself to think of the best things your brain can muster.
To further prove this weather theory of culture, let's turn to Russia. Russia is not only overcast, it's freezing cold, so they're shut inside for even longer than the English. Thus it's no surprise that they have such a great tradition of literature--of long, complex, rich, intense, intelligent novels. And then they take a break to play a long, complex, intense, intelligent game of chess.
When I was talking all this over with a Fulbright colleague, he agreed. He said people in these bad-weather countries are always indoors, where they sit down and say "let's think this through." And what's the "this"? Only our most essential and most desperate questions. Then they write it all down, and are kind enough to share it with everyone else, most of whom are far away and outside, enjoy their own country’s beautiful weather.
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