The Beast from the East

The first day of March 2018, and ‘The Beast from the East’ is here! Severe weather warnings... amber warnings (‘be careful’) and red warnings meaning ‘life is in danger’. Blizzard conditions, ice everywhere, and snow deeply drifting on hills and in the valleys, streets and towns... Winter weather is here, but the name the UK media are using is typically dramatic: 'The Beast from the East' to describe the Siberian weather sweeping over the country today and, it’s forecast, well into tomorrow too.

And there is more to come: apparently, we are to also expect – also tomorrow – 'The Pest from the West' which will be in competition with the 'Beast'...  

There’s nothing more that UK journalists love than to create nicknames for people, things, weather fronts... whatever!

What I find so interesting about this, though, is how traditional and ancient poetic devices like alliteration, or as in these examples, rhyme are seized upon with such enthusiasm. Many people say they don't like poetry, or never read it, but perhaps they do, in a manner of speaking. There’s perhaps nothing more satisfying than monosyllables in word-pairs in nice balanced phrases: ‘a blast from the past’ is one of my favourites that I learnt at an early age from my mother, who relished words, word-sounds, and word-games.

And she is not alone. It’s not only the light-weight media, the ‘red-tops’ (the old ‘tabloids’ like the Daily Mirror or the Daily Mail etc) that love these rhyming words: even the ‘sensible’ BBC News teams have taken on these nicknames – and the BBC’s weather forecasters themselves are telling the public to stay indoors and not to venture out into the path of the The Beast from the East...

The British are fairly obsessed with soap operas, and now it seems they've made the weather into one!!!

But what a welcome into March... L