ENGLAND’S WET SUMMER

Evening Star, Issue 22465, 9 October 1936, Page 2

ENGLAND’S WET SUMMER

NOT AN UNMIXED CALAMITY Holiday-makers may gnash their teeth as one wet day succeeds another, yet this exceedingly, wet summer, like the proverbial ill wind, is not an unmixed calamity. It has, for examp.e, brought unexpected prosperity to cinemas and theatres, umbrella salesmen, exhibition proprietors, and raincoat makers. All these people breathe ecstatic sighs when they cast their eyes to the weeping heavens, and calculate the value of each rainstorm in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence. If the weather were normal (which it seldom is in England), theatreland would be in the doldrums. Actons and actresses would be “ resting in hundreds, and the talkies would be talking to half-empty houses. As it is, however, the cinemas in London alone estimate an additional summer turnover of £8,000,000, and the theatres, with their extended runs, have alreadytaken over £1,000,000 more than last year. By the same token the trade in raincoats, umbrellas, goloshes, and waterproof capes can be justly __ described as “ roaring.” At least £500,000, we are told by beaming shopkeepers, has been netted as the result of that long sequence of Atlantic disturbances which has drenched the land for two interminable months. Forlorn though the man-iu-the-street may be, he is suffering ior his own good. At all events he is told so. Unsympathetic medical authorities inform him glibly that the continuous rain has washed the air of England and charged it with ozone to a degree almost incredible. Thus the would-be joy maker at the seaside, as he slops along the promenade, is inhaling air of such superb purity that his health improves willy-nilly. Despite his misery he finds, when he'returns to town, that he has not felt better for years. As a Harley street specialist put the case the other day: “ There is a complete absence of those cases of sudden death due to sunstroke and heart failure in hot weather. The prevailing cool, damp weather prevents the spread of germs and the multiplication of flies and other disease-carriers. Moreover, the air has been thoroughly cleansed, which is a good thing for everybody.” All very true, probably, but the average citizen, deprived of his Saturday sport, his sun-bathing, his swimming, and his rural excursions, would rather risk an army of germs and. an epidemic of sunstrokes than be deprived of his rightful summer. He declines the consolation offered by “ experts,” and spends most of his spare time lamenting the cruelty of his fate. Which, of course, is perfectly natural —far more natural, anyway, than the behaviour of the English climate, which has to lie endured to be behoved.