THE GREAT THING about living in England is that the place, unlike some other fifth-world dumps I've called home in the past, has four distinct seasons. The not-so-great thing is that they often come at 15- to 20-minute intervals.

This is not to imply that England is a fifth-world country. It's true that its train system, gasoline prices and beer are about what you would expect in Tunisia, Threenesia and Micronesia, but it does serve up a fine dram of Scotch, and the flowers are nice.

Whatever, I grew up in the green, rolling hills of Tennessee and North Carolina, where summer, winter, spring and fall are wondrous experiences of brilliant sunshine, crisp snow, budding dogwoods and rampant colors of oak and maple leaves, marking four distinct periods of the year.

That's what I got used to - packets of four seasons, once a year. In England, they can come in packets of four once every hour or two. It can be quite distracting, and it definitely makes planning a picnic an adventure in soggy sandwiches under umbrellas in the snow.

It's springtime in the hills of Northamptonshire, daffodils and snowdrops dot the land, but the day is so summery that I decide to take my old tabby cat Bear out for a wee-wee (him, not me) in the back garden at our cottage.

Now Teddy Bear is the original fair-weather cat. He flatly refuses to go outdoors on his own if there is any moisture about, if the temperature is one degree less than body heat and if so much as a single cloud obscures the sun.

One day recently, he had strolled happily out the door and all was well - until a single drop of rain landed on his nose. Bear, whose fastest time getting down a 15-foot hallway is 8 minutes 46 seconds, promptly made a dash for cover that would have eclipsed a Carl Lewis on speed.

But as I say, the gods seemed to be on their best behavior, the sun was summer radiant, and Bear trotted through the doorway onto the paving stones, heading for a favorite corner of the garden.

Then a single hailstone bounced off his skull. Bear instantly wheeled in his tracks and headed back toward indoor safety. I grabbed him up to shield him from the hailstones, which lasted a minute or so.

For the next few minutes, the cat and I waged silent warfare as I sought to persuade him to do his wee and/or poo amid the snowstorm that followed the hailstones, and the autumnal gale that followed the snow. Then back to blazing sunshine - four seasons, all in about 23 minutes.

That wasn't the end of it. A couple of hours later I crept out of my small office and went downstairs to the kitchen, where my wife Elizabeth greeted me with, "Did you see that?" See what? "The sun, then the hail and the snow, then the wind, and now we're back to sunshine again. . ."

That's the way the weather can go, and more often than not does go, in England. Which is why the back garden looks like a branch of the Okefenokee Swamp with cat turds.

Weather in this country is a great talking point, mainly because there is so much to talk about. I came to live here in large part because England has the kind of weather I really do like, although it has it in greater abundance than I would wish.

It does beat much of what I've had to put up with elsewhere. Take Florida, which I went off when I discovered the seasons numbered about two - summer and rain, often in each other's company like a particularly ill-suited married couple.

I went off Florida when I discovered that at Cape Canaveral, at least, you could go swimming on Christmas Day. Christmas is snowtime and mistletoe time for sane folk, not for splashing around in the briny. Anyway I loathe swimming.

Florida's one weather attraction is its hurricanes. I fondly recall going to Fort Myers, on the state's west coast, to cover the arrival of Hurricane Donna, back in the early 60s. Of course, the power lines went down and communications went out within the first 20 minutes or so.

When the eye of the hurricane came over an hour or so later, I ventured out into the absolute calm and found a liquor store, amazingly still open. I purchased about six bottles of their best, hied back to the motel, filled up the tub with water for mixer, and I and the other 16 residents happily rode out the storm for the next 36 hours or so.

Texas, my next stop, was a meteorological disaster - temperatures 106 degrees Fahrenheit or so, humidity in the low 140 percent, muggy beyond endurance. So we residents fled indoors, where thermostats had the air conditioning down in the mid-40s F. Summer colds tended to last the year round.

Vietnam had other problems, but at least its weather was a marginal improvement on Texas. You could get snowed upon as you huddled amid the bullets and bombs in the jungles of the highlands.

In Beirut and the rest of the Middle East, "sunny" was a word I came to hate. From mid-April to mid-October, it was unrelenting sunshine, day after day, nary a cloud to be seen. (In the alleged winter, you could get pounded to a pulp with hailstones the size of walnuts, but at least it made a change.)

Which is why, when I could take time off for an R&R break, I'd hie myself back to London and pray for rain. One great pleasure was jogging in the driving November rain in my shorts and T-shirt, although it created something of a stir among friends who thought I was a bit whacko.

But at least I have four different seasons in my life once again, even if they do all too often seem to come at once. I just wish they would relent long enough to let my garden dry out. Bear would appreciate it.

Thought for the Day: Truth flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

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