Something important has gone missing and the finger of suspicion regarding its disappearance should be pointed in the direction of the Meteorological Office.
They’ve either mislaid it, or, I suspect they may have deliberately dispensed with it altogether for unknown reasons my little brain has wrestled with for weeks, before emerging from the fray defeated and none the wiser.
“Phil! For goodness sake, man! What is it that’s gone missing?” I hear you say.
Ok. I’ll tell you.
It’s ‘Sunday’.
Yes, good old Sunday, the day of rest, which, ironically, the Met Office has seemingly given a rest, as you might already be aware, if you’ve watched any weather forecast on any TV channel in the last couple of months.
Forecasters have no problem at all telling us what to expect weather-wise on the following Saturday.
They enjoy talking about Saturday.
But with regard to Sunday . . . dear oh dear!
I’m shaking my head now, in the manner of a disappointed schoolteacher who’s just read one of his pupil’s essays which was full of spelling errors and bad grammar.
The fact is many weather forecasters today simply can’t bring themselves to mention ‘Sunday’. Instead, they much prefer to refer to it as ‘the second part of the weekend’!
At which point I have been known to shout at the screen “The word you’re looking for, sunshine, is SUNDAY!”
They don’t refer to Saturday as ‘the first part of the weekend’ so what is this strange compulsion to refer to Sunday as ‘the second part of the weekend’?
I can only assume weather forecasters get paid by the word, so that every time they refer to ‘the second part of the weekend’ it earns them a few more quid than a simple ‘Sunday’.
What other explanation is there?
Will forecasters’ reluctance to mention a specific day of the week lead to . . .
“It’ll rain on the first day after the weekend, but it’ll be sunny for two days after that, until the day before the last working day of the week!”
Such a possibility has made me feel decidedly under the weather.