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A lot of people think that the English are unfriendly. They aren't — they're very friendly; but they often don't know what they can talk to people about.
So they talk about the weather.
A conversation between two Englishmen always begins with the weather.
"Hallo, John. Lovely weather! " "Yes, it is." "Better than yesterday." "Yes." Or: "Hallo John. Awful weather! " "Yes, it is." "As bad as yesterday." "Yes."
It rains a lot in England, but people always like to talk about the rain.
"Look! It's raining! " "Do you think it'll rain for a long time?
"I don't know. It rained all day yesterday." "The radio said it'd rain for a week."
"It's good for the garden." "Yes.. ."
"I won't get wet. I've got an umbrella." "So have I. .. But I've got a hole in my shoe."
"They say it's raining in France, too." "Yes. And in Spain. It's bad for the people on holiday."
"I don't know where all this rain comes from." The English always think the weather will be bad; they usually carry umbrellas to work and wear strong shoes and thick clothes. An Englishman often doesn't stop wearing his winter vest until June: he thinks that he'll get a cold if he takes it off!
That's why everyone's happy when the sun comes out. Office workers eat sandwiches in the parks, young people sunbathe, workmen take off their shirts. Every twenty minutes, they look at the sky to see if any clouds are coming.
But, it's never very hot in England, and sometimes the summers are very wet, so most English people have their holidays abroad: they go to Spain or Italy or Greece. For the last ten years, a lot of the seaside towns in England have been quite empty in the summer.
The best seasons of the year in England are the spring and the autumn. It rains a lot in the spring, and everything's very green. All the parks and gardens are full of flowers. In the autumn, the leaves on the trees become brown and red and yellow, and there are cool, misty evenings.
People who come to London in the winter always think the weather will be foggy. Thirty years ago, London had very bad fogs. They were yellow, from the smoke from chimneys and factories, and were often so thick that you couldn't see where you were. But in 1952 there was a very bad fog for three days, and a lot of people were ill. Since then, nobody in London has been allowed to light fires that make smoke. Fogs sometimes come from the river but they're clean, and aren't thick. A lot of foreigners are sorry because they can't see a London fog — but the people who live in London are pleased!