Floods? What floods? Oh, yeah...

So Britain is in grip of the worst flooding in 60 years and apparently people in London should be ready to evacuate if necessary. (I'm prefectly fine by the way). This was bought ot my attention by several non-British people as the collective reaction of the English people is another of those fine examples of "stiff upper lip" which is one of those admirable and strong characteristics of the British people which probably only non-British see as profoundly identifying. It's a fact that occasionally British people dramatize the weather as was seen by the "storm is coming" alerts a few winters ago. This was laughed at by American and Canadian people who see real winter-storms as a few inches of snow. Possibly English people felt a bit sheepish about over dramatising (the cardinal sin in English culture) but then at that time the trains were going to stop working (as they do in any kind of imperfect weather) and that was a real tragedy, and could be blamed on the government privatisations (Thatcher scars...). Be it that, or the fact that the necessity of showing the terrorists we don't really care about a paltry few bombs (an anti-terrorist weapon that the whole British public have adopted without any effort at all) has carried over into the weather, no one is really showing they're worried about the weather.
Actually, we do care - all the conversations centre about the impossibility of planning the next barbecue, and how the shops haven't made any money of the summer clothes...