The weather is a lot like politics - what you want most is mostly what we don't have... right now.
We just went through several weeks of some of the hottest, driest weather on record.
In fact, depending on how you measure it (and precisely where you take your measurements), we may just have had the driest July ever in the Lower Mainland. Indeed, not a drop of rain was recorded throughout the entire month in any official recording station in the immediate vicinity.
And Vancouver also broke its previous record for hours of sunshine in July - which I would expect translates to a similar record for the rest of us in the outlying hinterlands.
And let's be clear about this: the record broken was for the MOST hours of sunshine in a single July - 410 hours of sun peeking from behind previously ubiquitous clouds, veritably smashing the old 409.3-hour mark set in 1985.
Imagine that! Sunny Vancouver! (David Duchovny, eat your heart out!) You'd think such a record would make people happy - ecstatic, even - especially considering that, like Mr. Duchovny (he's the fellow who had the entire X-Files show transported south to escape our supposedly dreary climes, remember?)
complaining about the incessant rain, rain, rain is one of our favourite pastimes.
In fact, I heard a lot of people were complaining about the hot, hot, hot with no respite - way too hot.
Admittedly, I rarely heard a single complaint about it having been too dry (except from those unfortunates among us - myself included - who depend on groundwater and a dug well for our sustenance and to feed the gardening monkey we carry on our backs).
But the heat? Way too darned hot! Until today.
When I woke up last Friday morning, the first thing that I noticed was that the fan blowing air into my bedroom window, was blowing cool air - almost wintery, by recent standards.
And when I looked out, I rejoiced! There was water falling from the sky - only a little bit, at first, but it picked up momentum, and soon there was a veritable deluge. The plants in my garden heaved a collective sigh of relief.
The lawn began turning green again, almost immediately.
But when I made my way from the nether reaches of my backyard and into the clutches of civilized company, the story was suddenly different.
Complaints of "way too darned hot" had already reverted to: "Way too darned cold, way too darned wet - why don't we ever get a real summer around here?" The very people who had only days earlier vociferously complained of hot, sticky, sweatstained T-shirts and no way to escape from the sun's harsh ultra-violet rays assaulting us with threats of deadly cancers were now bemoaning the fickle - dreary-again - climate that routinely drenches our landscapes and drowns our dreams of natural tans... which we all avoid when the sun does make its occasional appearance.
There's no pleasing us. We are a species of complainers. I said the weather is like politics? Actually, it's our perception of the weather that is like our perception of politics.
Whatever we have right now isn't good enough - we want it to be something better, by tomorrow. And if tomorrow comes with any kind of change... it's never as good as it was.
Bob Groeneveld is the editor of the Langley
