Weather defines the character of a country. Bill Bryson, the American humorist and author, famously once described Britain as “just dull, a land without shadows. It was like living in Tupperware”.
Bryson had been worn down by British weather, traditionally clouds and rain of various intensity for much of the year.
This photograph could have been taken in the UK. The grey skies, the boxy saloon car with a background of damp, drab anonymous concrete buildings – anyone who visited the industrial suburbs of Birmingham in the 1970s would have felt a twinge of nostalgia (or, more likely, rheumatism).
In fact this is Abu Dhabi in the 1970s, a place most people associate with palm trees and blue skies, but which also receives rain in the winter months, if intermittently. The Arabic shop sign is the giveaway.
That’s what makes this photo significant. What is mundane in one part of the world is unusual enough in another for it to be considered a news event.
* James Langton
