The weather from an uninformed viewpoint (and selective memories)

Many many years ago, when I thought I was a grown up at the age of 15, I was supposedly hard at work doing O levels one of which was Geography (which I hated as my Geography teacher was about 6'7" and kept an old size 15 trainer under his desk with which to administer public encouragement in his subject).
I dreaded lessons knowing that at some point I would be dragged off my chair by my hair for either giggling in class or for failing to hand in a homework.
I wasn't especially picked upon, it happened on a random basis along with his often misdirected temper. His aim with a blackboard rubber however was unerringly accurate and on occasions threatened serious injury (unlike the boss eyed Mr Hedges who threw things in a far more random fashion) and largely we sat there reasonably quiet and a little scared.
Oh Mr Bailey, what would I have done to have met you in a dark cupboard when you were old and I was strong.
I wasn't interested in the Tundra and I wasn't interested in coal mining in the Ruhr Valley, but I was interested whether to dodge the flight of the inevitable blackboard rubber to the left or to the right.
However, there were three topics that did interest me despite the preoccupation of avoiding injury: Geology (well, fossils and volcanoes to be more accurate), Cartography, and the Weather.
I could be wrong, but I seem to have a vague recollection that in the summer our predominant winds were south easterlies and in the winter they were a combination of notherlies and westerlies, and in the spring and autumn they were a muddled up combination which has become lost in the mists of time.
The winter that has just passed was to all people of my age group a "proper" winter, with snow and ice and everything, but in truth, that is just because these were the winters of our childhoods, and nowhere near the average winters of our lives. Likewise, summers aren't what they used to be, but largely because we don't remember the rainy days of junior school because they were dull days when we were even kept in at lunchtimes and had to do "drawing" when we yearned to be out playing tig (or football, or "war" whatever that was).

Anyway, having brought my certain ignorance on meteorology to bear, my point is, that despite some glorious weather this spring, it seems very odd to have had such prolonged periods of northerly winds. Maybe it isn't unusual at all, and just maybe my Geography lessons 35 years ago were the total waste of time I perceived them to be. Either way, the air is suspiciously cool.