Two Bristol blokes yappin about the weather yeah.

Submitted to the Puppet Place Bristol 48 hour puppet challenge. I had 48 hours to come up with a story and produce a puppet film following the prompts Action: “scratch” Item: “tape” and Theme: “dream." You didn’t have to make puppets specifically for it, but I did since I had never made puppets before.

The story is inspired by my experience being forced to continuously talk about the weather in the UK. However, I’ve come to realize “weather talk” actually serves quite an important and useful purpose. Might I dare say there’s something kind of beautiful about it. Its purpose goes far beyond the literal act of conveying weather conditions, rather it acts as an important ice breaker and conversation regulator. I find it’s especially useful as something to talk about to say, someone you find boring or random bloke at the pub you have absolutely nothing in common with. It sort of says “hey I acknowledge and am cool with your existence, I’m just not too interested in going much deeper, respectfully.” Weather talk is incredibly important during long conversations with friends. Naturally, there will be pauses in conversation. Instead of sitting there in silence (which many people unlike myself are uncomfortable with) weather talk acts as a good place holder until the conversation moves on. What’s so interesting about weather talk is the colorful variety and pure creativity people deploy in order to turn the mundane into something one can converse on. It’s an art to talk weather, something every Brit can do to a T. But I do wonder, respectfully, all those hours added up talking about the weather couldn’t you have thought of something more interesting to talk about?