Dan Whitaker in The Observer:
Spring at last feels sprung, and most Britons are gazing upwards, searching for blue skies. But not all – a growing minority are speaking up in defence of clouds.
Cloud lovers now have a spiritual home, the Cloud Appreciation Society, with billowing membership and a UK website that won the recent Yahoo award for Weird and Wonderful Site of the Year.
The society was launched at a Cornish literary festival in 2004 by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Idler magazine. Nearly 2,000 people signed up within a year. Membership surged further following a plug on Channel 4’s Richard and Judy show last February.
Cloudspotters are enthusiastic about what American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson called ‘the ultimate art gallery above’. Toni-Marie Hudson, a site devotee who combines art with work at a Blockbuster video store in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, salutes nature’s sculptures, which ‘create dimension to the sky … I love clouds’.
More here.