Hello!

Well, actually I'm not due to work until 9:30 AM and it only takes me 15 minutes to get to where I gotta go today, so I'm outa here after this post.

You asked what I attribute this warm weather to [I was raised during the times when you weren't supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. But it seems to fit there, so times change and grammar rules may change to keep up with the times]..
I'm not sure folks outside of the USA got the opportunity to see a Christmas cartoon that featured the brothers HeatMiser & ColdMiser {or some such name]. That cartoon had some great jingle type songs like this one:

I'm Mister HeatMiser
I'm Mr. Sun
I'm Mister HeatMiser
I'm Mister hundred and one.
Friends call me HeatMiser
Whatever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch.
I'm too much.
-snip-

[For some reason, though it has been a number of years since I last saw this cartoon, I remember the HeatMiser's song and not his brother's].

Well, anyway HeatMiser and his brother ColdMiser were battling in the sky over what type of weather there would be for Christmas. HeatMiser didn't want there to be snow and of course ColdMiser wanted a lot of snow. Of course, at the end of that cartoon, ColdMiser won.

All of that to say that I think HeatMiser is responsible for the unseasonably hot weather that some parts of the world are getting right now.
And that's that!

;o)

PS: Mingulay at work-I hope they're not working you too hard.

As to turning pawnshops into estate agents- in the USA "estate agents" are people who manage estates. I assume that in Great Britain that term means the building where those people work, right?

If so, that's another example of the meaning of English words being different in different English speaking nations.