To Norroway o'er the faem

Lady Bracknell, as her acquaintances cannot help but be aware, is not fond of hot weather. In fact, to say that she "is not fond" of it is an understatement somewhat akin to venturing the opinion that Young Master Marmite is not overly enamoured of carrots and that Mr Fork can take or leave broccoli.

Hot weather does not agree with her ladyship. For one thing, it causes her hands and feet to swell painfully. She is stout of figure and she is of Viking descent, a combination which renders her physiologically suited to colder climes than these. Norway, possibly.

(If Lady Bracknell may be permitted to digress for a moment, she has reminded herself of a story she was told last year. Apparently, one of our largest public sector employers has published internal guidance on something called the Intranet - Lady Bracknell gathers from her editor that this is something like the interwebnet, but containing rather less pornography - on the subject of measures to be taken when offices are uncomfortably hot. According to this helpful guidance, the susceptibility of employees to high temperatures will vary depending on their individual physiognomies. Which is a novel and entertaining concept and one which, Lady Bracknell suspects, could easily be turned into an amusing parlour game by an enterprising and imaginative person.)

If there is one thing which Lady Bracknell finds even more wearying than hot weather itself, it is the constant pressure (to which, naturally, she will not bend) to claim to be deriving enjoyment from it. As her ladyship's regular readers will no doubt recall from the entries she published on the subject of Christmas, Lady Bracknell has no wish to deprive anyone of his or her enjoyment of particular times of year or meteorological phenomena. But she really does take exception to the degree of personal affront displayed by certain individuals when she takes an opposing view.

In what precise way is their own enjoyment of hot weather diminished by discovering that Lady Bracknell would much prefer a crisp autumn morning to a broiling hot summer day? It is not as though there are any moral issues at stake here: Lady Bracknell is not barging in to a convention of vegans, brandishing a bloody haunch of venison. The conviction that hot weather is good is not one which was arrived at after years of ethical and philosophical wrangling: it is nothing more than a matter of personal taste.

Lady Bracknell is very fond of the colour blue. It is likely that, from time to time, she will meet persons whose favourite colour is red. If, upon hearing of this affection for red, Lady Bracknell begins by begging the lover of red to reconsider his or her ill-formed preference in light of the self-evident superiority of blue, and ends by taking offence because her interlocutor is immovable on the colour issue, she would hardly expect to be paid any sort of heed. But, of course, Lady Bracknell would not behave in such a manner because it does not matter a fig to her that somebody else's colour preferences are not in tune with her own.

And the next time someone asks her, "Oh, but how can you not like this glorious weather?", she will be tempted to respond in a less than civil manner.


Lady Bracknell has strayed more than somewhat from her original intentions in penning this entry. All that she had really meant to say was that the degree of welcome relief from the effects of uncomfortably high temperatures which can be gained by the simple expedient of having one's hair cut is astonishing.