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It is a remarkable feature of the human brain that it is incapable of retaining focus during the weather forecast. On it comes and you’re desperate to find out which coat to wear tomorrow, whether it’s a day for long or short sleeves, or if to take your umbrella.

Yet seconds into the forecast, and the brain has gone walkabout. It has decided to concentrate on next year’s holiday, what it would like for dinner, whether the vase of flowers on top of the TV needs more water, what is the order of the colours in the rainbow, and why the map of Britain is such a funny shape.

It may also idly reflect why the south of Ireland never gets any weather at all – rain, snow and sun all stop at the border – but I gather that’s something to do with the Easter Uprising.

Sometimes the wayward mind will elect to concentrate on the weather-person’s extravagant hand gestures, how the fingers cup around the palm to thump south-western Scotland with an incoming wave of low pressure, or how a flat hand will push up from Hampshire to show the movement of an occluded front.

There may be a verdict to be made on the woman’s choice of dress, and concerns whether she will topple over the balcony at Broadcasting House.

But the net result is always the same.

“What’s the weather going to do tomorrow?” shouts your partner from the kitchen. “Sorry, I missed it,” you reply pathetically. She or he will ask the same question at
9 o’clock and 10 o’clock, and the answer will still be the same.

If all these lost moments could be accumulated, there would be time to fit in an additional holiday (in uncertain weather). In our lives we spend around 30 years asleep, and a further ten not listening to the weather forecast.