Partner content produced by HealthLine Daily. Not medical advice, and not, in any meaningful sense, medicine.
In the north of Scotland, discussion of the weather is not small talk. It is the load-bearing wall of the entire social structure. It opens conversations, closes them, fills the middle, and provides an exit from any interaction that has gone on too long.
Which is what makes the case of Wilf, 81, of Thurso, so remarkable.
Over fourteen months, in more than two hundred recorded conversations at the post office, the bowling club, two bus stops and one funeral, Wilf has not once mentioned the weather.
Not the wind. Not the rain. Not the haar. He has never observed that it is a bit close, that it is fresh out, that it is trying to brighten up, or that it will be dark by four before you know it.
‘We had to check the recordings twice’
“We assumed an equipment fault,” the study lead said. “In a comparable sample of eleven residents, the mean time to first weather reference was nineteen seconds. The fastest was four. He has gone fourteen months.”
The team stress that Wilf is in excellent health, is highly sociable, and talks at length — about the harbour, about his late wife’s roses, about a dispute concerning a fence in 1987 that he is still winning.
“He is not avoiding it. Avoidance would show. It simply does not appear to occur to him. That is the part we cannot account for.”
Dr Clark, HealthLine Daily contributor
Five signs you may be over-mentioning the weather
- You have said “dreich” more than twice today
- You open phone calls with a forecast rather than a greeting
- You have described the same rain to three separate people
- You say “we’ll pay for this” on any pleasant day
- You have told someone it is cold for the time of year while both of you were standing in it
What happened when we asked him
At the end of the study period, and against the advice of two team members, Wilf was asked directly whether he ever thought about the weather.
He considered the question for some time.
“Aye,” he said. “It’s been a bit close.”
The recording ends there. The study has been withdrawn.
