Talking about the weather is a quintessentially British pastime.
But for one woman from Taverham, actions speak louder than words.
For Ruth Plant has spent the last 40 years faithfully recording the weather in her garden.
In the 1970s, Mrs Plant received a thermometer as a present from her husband, Ben. The grandmother-of-five has always had an interest in the weather but since then she has decided to start recording it.
She said: “We put the thermometer in the garden and I started to take the temperature and record what the weather was.
“There have only been a few breaks in my notes, such as when we’ve gone on holiday or moved house, but other than that I’ve always been able to record it.” The couple, who married in 1962, moved from near Liverpool to Norfolk the same year and have lived in a number of locations since then, including Drayton and Kirstead, near Brooke, before finally settling down in Taverham.
Although a self-confessed technophobe, Mrs Plant, who celebrates her 80th birthday on October 24, has an iPad and installed the BBC Weather app to keep up-to-date.
“I also like to check the weather on the telly too,” she added. “I’m just always interested in it, Well, it’s a British pastime, isn’t it?
“I love the spring but I’m not really a cold weather person, so not the winter so much. We don’t have winters like we used to either - proper winters - like the ones I had when we were younger with lots of snow.”
Mrs Plant has recorded the data in her diaries and can fit four to five years of note in there, which she puts down to her “tiny handwriting”.
She also said her husband was “very supportive” of her hobby.
When she is not recording the weather, she volunteers at the RSPCA charity shop in Norwich.
Julia Hedley, one of the couple’s two daughters, said: “Mum has always had a thermometer in the garden and without fail takes two recordings a day, one in the morning one at night, and writes it all down in her notebooks. This shows amazing dedication and commitment which I would love to see recognised.
“I also think the Meteorological Society may well be interested in her recordings and the data that has been gathered over more than four decades, and I am now in talks with them to see if the data could be used for their archives.”
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