Курсовая работа: An Evergreen topic in British classical literature, children’s poems and everyday speech: patterns of climate in the British isles

- I think it’s so nice when it’s hot, isn’t it?

- I really love it, don’t you?

* * *

- Terrible day, isn’t it?

- Isn’t it unpleasant?

- The rain … I don’t like the rain.

- Just I think – a day like this is July. It rains in the morning, then a bit of sun and then rain, rain, rain all day.

- I remember the same July day in 1936…

- Yes, I remember too.

- Or was it 1928?

- Yes it was.

- Or in 1939?

- Yes, that’s right.

* * *

- It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?

- Yes, isn’t the day fine?

- The sun … not a cloud in the sky…

- It’s so nice and warm.

- Isn’t it wonderful?

Although the last two conversations are humorous, one must follow a very important rule: you must always agree with other people when you talk about the weather. If it is raining and snowing and the wind is knocking down trees, and someone says “nice day, isn’t it?” one usually answers “isn’t it wonderful?”

There are a lot of jokes and stories about the British weather in common use. A good example of English humor is the following story:

“A Londoner, who was going to the west of England for a holiday, arrived by train at a town and found that it was pouring with rain. He called a porter to carry his bags to a taxi. On the way out of the station, partly to make conversation and partly to get a local opinion about the weather prospects for his holiday, he asked the porter: “How long has it been raining like this?” – “I don’t know, sir, I have only been here for fifteen years”, was the reply.

One can also read lots of humorous stories about the British weather in books by Jerome K. Jerome:

“There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the sea – the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom… Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and may be a southerly oily wind; but weather it came from the Arctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time”.

But we must say that the British are very optimistic in spite of the weather which is very changeable.

When the weather is wet

We must not fret.

When the weather is cold

We must not scold.