Whither weather
The weather forms a huge part of our lives. On Btv when they forecast the weather you can see the grace of God just filtering through because the weather report is the only part of the news where they never get the captions wrong. Captions like ‘David Norris: BPC assistant referee’ and you see a little girl from D’Kar flashing across the screen do not happen when it is the weather report. These captions that leave you more confused than first-time voters when asked whether Mokoko is a political party or not never happen when the weatherman is on.
Have you noticed that ever since our favorite weatherman Radithupa Radithupa and the guys that used to adorn those strange jackets left the weather is becoming more difficult to predict. Remember how our fashion-clued viewers would go on a darting exercise when the weather report came on. The subject would always be about the ill-fitting jackets of weathermen and how uncoordinated the whole look was. This became the topic whenever the weather report came on and most missed the weather forecast completely. The local fashion police actually were nasty enough to categorise them as ‘people who have no idea what is going on’. Our fashion police though is made entirely of bottom rung officers – that is constables – so their opinions should always be taken with a grain of pepper. So our weather guys should not have left merely because the fashion constabulary was on their case.
Amidst all this Radithupa somehow endeared himself to all because his jacket was acceptable and whenever he did the weather report we paid attention to the actual weather report. I was horrified to read about his retirement the other day.
Ever notice that ever since that cohort left the weather seems out of control. I mean only this week we had close to four seasons happening in a matter of one week. As I am writing this article it is winter in my city. Yesterday it was summer and earlier this week we had a semblance of autumn and spring. It is like the Weather Gods are protesting that this cohort has left and have now decided to throw in more confusion on the weather predictions.
The weather forecasters believe they are on track but the track has been swept off the right course by the floods and they don’t know.
But isn’t it disappointing that despite all the changes that are happening around us the weather report language is stuck on bland.
‘Fine but partly cloudy’; ‘warm with scattered thundershowers’ are the standard weatherman’s reports. Amidst all this blandness we have to suffer through in these reports and amidst the ‘A Re Chencheng’ noises this is one glorious time for the weatherman to totally dunk a creativity bomb on the viewers.
How about weather reports with a touch of panache like
The weather forecasters believe they are on track but the track has been swept off the right course by the floods and they don’t know
● Tomorrow it will be a bad hair day so don’t go to the hair salon yet: for windy days
● God will throw stones at you with amazing fury: for hail storms
● Clouds with GPS: on foggy days
● The sun will smile at you better than the RADP beauty contestants: for warm days
● The weather will be fine with a high chance that locals will argue about the salary of the new Zebras coach
This sounds crazy-level creative and I see an industry sprouting up from this. Am I an optimist? Perhaps!
(For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com)
*Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com.