A wind from the wrong corner

I don’t know if it has been windier this year than in other years, but we certainly seem to have had a lot of it in 2015. Earlier in the year there were storms and as our house faces the sea – about ¼ mile from the shore, we do get a lot of blustery weather anyway. But over spring and now we’re into summer, we still have a lot of very sharp and chilly winds. Even though the sun has been out it has been really a bit nipsome!

It seems to have been the same in Europe, my Dutch friend shared a lovely idiom which she got from her mother or grandmother, ‘the wind’s from the wrong corner’. This got me thinking about other weather related idioms and sayings; I’m sure they have them in every language as my Dutch friend has shown, but I do wonder if we have more in English, because as an island off a large continent we maybe subject to more extremes. Nowhere in Britain is more than seventy miles from the nearest coast.

I did a little investigation and came across a few windy sayings:

• billy wind
• chill wind of something
• get wind of
• ill wind.
• know which way the wind blows
• long-winded
• put the wind up someone
• sail close to the wind
• shoot the breeze
• something in the wind
• throw caution to the wind
• twisting in the wind
• windbag
• windfall

I was thinking about wind, and the things we say, when I overheard an elderly lady on the bus, ‘Ooh,it’s that wind it won’t sit down’… she’s right! It’s a lovely day today but the wind won’t sit down!