The Prince and the Meteorologist

In a story in today's Guardian I find the following gem from reporter Simon Hattenstone

Leicesterarians¹ looked at the snow falling, and read the unseasonal weather for significance. "Prince has just died and he wrote a song called Sometimes It Snows In April" said one man to his friend. "It's a sign, isn't it?" His friend nodded sagely.

Deconstructing the mindset that attempts to link

•  the death of an American singer (not noted for being a fan of Leicester City FC, or indeed any UK football team, or in fact, any sports outfit that plies its trade in these islands) several days ago
• the weather in the East Midlands
•  the fortunes of a football club attempting to win the league they play in for the first time in, well, ever,

 would, I believe, would take more words than I fear Messrs. Google would let me employ, as well as using up all of my precious supply of italics and exclamation marks. I do, however, admire the friend who sensibly confined his response to a nod instead of suggesting that the speaker hand himself over to the psychiatric wing of the nearest hospital for the severely impaired of thinking.  Sometimes a sage nod is the best thing to calm down a dangerous lunatic who no doubt reads signs in his daily tea, counts the magpies that cross his path and does the lottery because "well, you know, everyone gets lucky sooner or later, don't they?"

My interest in this story is not with the men from Leicester or their team, to whom I genuinely wish good fortune, but with the afore-mentioned extinct pop singer. I was hitherto aware of only one title penned by the monosyllabled warbler, because the Today programme insisted on playing a few seconds of it when covering the story of his death. This recording is called Purple Rain.   Hmm. A song about rain and now there's one about snow. Is there a trend here? And that gut-wrenchingly, true to life scream of raw emotion that only a true artist, whatever he was formerly called, can summon up. I mean, April is well known for being the cruellest month but to be informed that sometimes it snows as well, how much more can a span of thirty days take? Are people looking up to the skies e'en as we speak going "Any snow visible? According to Prince it sometimes buckets down at this time of year, better get the skis down from the attic and cancel the barbecue".

Of course it sometimes snows in March, not to mention nearly all of the other months. It often pisses down with rain and Mrs. C and I have only this week been in beautiful North Norfolk where it was hailing fit to bust and with a wind coming off the North Sea that would freeze your nadgers off, if you left them exposed for long enough.

I suppose pop singers get sick of going on about the girl they love who doesn't love them, or the girl that does love them, or how nice it is to be in love or how unpleasant to be out of it, or wouldn't it be nice if everyone was in love, and the rest of it. It is certainly comforting to us Brits that Mr. Prince (or was that his first name?) should turn his attentions to one of our favourite subjects for conversation, and how unerringly he hit the target. Yes, it does indeed sometimes snow in April and no-one could argue with that, at least no-one round these parts can, I don't know about his followers in places like Arizona and Sao Paulo [Brazil, right? Ed] but I suppose they have their own evocative ditties. Occasionally We Get Rather Hot or Now And Then There's A Few Clouds Of An Evening, that sort of thing.

I'm playing with the idea of making a few hot waxings about things in beautiful Ruislip. The album will be called You Wouldn't Believe How Wet It Was Last Thursday and potential tracks include Wind Over Ickenham, Bloody Hell It's Cold Today  and The Those Sodding Pipes Are Frozen Again, Blues. Kickstarter, here we come.


1. I have no idea how to pronounce this and suggest you don't bother trying either.