Cold Comfort

As I sit pondering, the snow is falling outside my window. It has been for over an hour now and I am not feeling much like doing anything that involves moving more than a few small muscles. I feel cerebrally active but leave out the physical - its something I need to work up to, like building up a head of steam from cold, and at the moment I'm cold, though not in a thermal sense (I'm warm), just in the getting up out of my comfortable settee (think the last interest - free installment on it has been paid- I'll know when the statement comes!). My wife has started zotting around the house doing things that have to be done because "I just can't sit here" - I know what she means but I refuse to feel guilty so I'll just sit here with "Primeval" as background audio visual wallpaper while I wax lyrical.

Back to the snow. Its still snowing and the vacuum cleaner dirt cylinder has just been emptied. Yesterday on BBC2 they showed a documentary - "Winterwatch 1963 - the Big Freeze" which I watched last night following returning from watching a pantomime in Cambourne, late and when I really should have been in bed. It re-ran a very old film on the "Tonight" programme presented by Cliff Michelmore (that took me back!), and it seemed as if in January and February of 1963 the world nearly came to an end while perishing under polar blizzards, Siberian temperatures, and Himalayan ice flows. One amazing fact which came out of it and was not mentioned by Cliff was that half the British bird population was wiped out. (Its still snowing). However, over the following not many years, the birds quickly re-established themselves in even greater numbers - hurrah!

In 1963 I was a mere stripling 13 years old skinny lad who could easily die of hypothermia if left out too long. I remember the Big Freeze. At the time, from my point of view it didn't feel like the Big Freeze, it was more a wow, this is fantastic - all this snow and I can't wait to get out in it type of thing, though my Mum and Dad didn't see it in the same way. My Dad (we didn't have a car) used to cycle (the pedal type) to work each day from Potters Bar to Southgate and somehow or other still made it to work every day - and back. I don't ever remember him coming home early because his kindly caring employer had let him off early because of the severe weather! One thing which really stands out in my memory is OUR SCHOOL NEVER CLOSED - NOT EVEN FOR A DAY!!!!! I remember one lunchtime building a huge snowball - the type you could only build by rolling it with the help of others, and then , somehow, lifting it high enough to crash it down onto one of the other boy's head - can't remember who he was but I have a hazy memory of him not being very amused  This lead to a pitched snow battle between all my mates and all his mates and any form or level of violence was good enough, so long as it involved snow - oh how we laughed!

I remember milk bottles on the doorstep with the cream having expanded upward and leaving the tin foil top sitting precariously on top, often with bird-beak driven holes in the top where the desperate starving birds had pecked into them for sustenance. When I went "down the shops" down the "line path" to Darkes Lane with my mum, she never had to carry the shopping home because we'd stick it on the sled and pull it home. I was very sorry when the thaw eventually came as it must, and the snow disappeared, as taking the sled shopping was fun; not taking the sled and there being no snow and no use for the sled was just plain boring. One day I took a trek to my mate Paul's house and we built an igloo in his garden. This was no nambi-pambi half-hearted igloo, but the real McCoy. The snow was so deep in his garden we actually cut and fashioned big snow building blocks and finished up with an igloo you could live in - if you were so inclined, but I wasn't and my parents wouldn't have let me even if I had wanted to.  It was still there when all the surrounding snow had long melted, it was that good!

Nowadays when it snows, we just don't seem to be able to cope. Schools close because there is 2 inches of snow on the ground and horror of horrors it might even become 3!!!!! People get sent home from work early - mustn't risk anyone having an accident on the way home if we leave it too late! Even so, if I get sent home, I don't complain! - more time for pursuing my hobbies.... The ten pin bowling league gets cancelled, even though if people did make the effort and drove carefully, it would probably be alright! Trains stop running and airports close. The economy falters as goods do not get delivered and we hear of food prices having to rise. It will be very interesting then, as we plunge ever deeper into the Doomsday consequences of global warming or should I say climate change, to see how we cope in the future when we most surely according to current predictions have to face winters far worse than anything we encountered in 1963. Back to the British "War Time Spirit" and "Stiff Upper Lip" methinks.

Its still snowing.

Change and feeling

I feel the urge to write, though I'm not sure what. I feel as if my life is taking a radical change in direction, and things will never be the same again. There are so many things I want to do with my life, and I am more and more conscious of how rapidly life is passing me by. My creative instincts are taking over, and I feel the need to create much because it is a part of what makes us human.

I have a great need of beauty. music, countryside, landscape. That's probably why I love photography so much. Its a chance to capture beauty, and preserve it to ponder over later, and for future generations. The power of music and wonderful images together can stir the soul, inspire, and even change lives. I feel my life being changed..irrevocably. I am changing, growing older, moving on, dying, transforming, loving........and feeling sadness.

I guess I'm feeling somewhat doleful, or even maudlin. I have a warm glow of anticipation, and yet a sadness that the things and people I love in life are changing and disappearing. Its important to hang onto the things and people who you love. Its important to use your creative talents to good effect,. Its important to be truthful and keep a sense of proportion and humour. Its also important to realise that no matter how bad life might seem at the moment, it will change - but not always for the better. Even so, I cope.

Rain Again

Today it rained. It didn't just rain - it REALLY rained. I was sat feeding my face with a couple of cheese toasties at lunch time when I heard a strange rushing, gushing, wind beating pitter patter noise. I looked out of the window. I could hardly see anything for rain lashing down at high speed with a gale blowing so hard my large potted plants were blowing over and the gazebo was tilting at a crazy angle.

Now I have to say that this kind of down-pour use to be very rare in this country. Today's torrent was reminiscent of what I used to experience when I was living in Singapore. Over there, the ground used to steam afterwards - no doubt still does! I am coming rapidly to the conclusion that the climate in this country is creeping ever closer to a tropical one. The summer ends later, the spring starts earlier, the winters are milder (what's snow?), and we are seeing more and more rats and other vermin which the cold used to kill off.

Being completely selfish, I don't really mind all this because given the choice between being warm or being cold I would always choose to be warm. I'm wearing a pullover now, and it's not cold! Even so, the temperature increase is only one aspect of climate change. We are going to see a lot more flooding and violent storms as the years go by. Because of the positive feedback contained in some of the climate change mechanisms, this process is going to gradually accelerate over time, and the insurance companies won't be able to keep pace and people won't be able to afford the premiums. Am I depressing you?

As for me, I shall continue to go and sit in a sauna and steam room, until the climate has changed so that I don't have to!

Doomed

Professor James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis said that it is too late to stop global warming; too much damage has already been done. We might turn off a few lights and reduce our "carbon footprint" a little over the next couple of decades or so, but whatever is planned now is nowhere near enough. And nor can it be enough, because, I repeat, it is too late. We are in a state where we know we have a terminal disease for which there is no cure, all we can do is try to slow down its progress. But in the end, and there will be an end, the disease will have its way. This is really dark and morbid stuff, but I am afraid it is reality. Its no good trying to bury your head in the sand and hope it will go away - it won't. When you consider that China, the most populous country in the world, is opening on average two new coal fired power stations every single week, it makes a complete mockery when we as individuals might try to "do our bit" to save the planet. Also, we cannot save the planet. The planet itself is not at risk. When people talk about saving the planet, what they really mean is saving our living environment we need for our survival. The planet will continue, and so will life upon it, with us or without us, it doesn't need us - it is indifferent to us. The floods we are having at the moment are as nothing compared with what is to come. Even in these relatively early stages of global warming, we are seeing unprecedented extreme weather conditions - every year. These conditions will get more extreme year on year. You ain't seen nothing yet. In the end, nature will have the last laugh. The best thing we as a species can do is get real, and face up to it. Don't blame the authorities when your house gets flooded or your reservoir dries up. No one is perfect. It is not their fault. If mankind is contributing to global warming and climate change, its the fault of all of us. We are just too greedy. We are selfish. We invade each other's countries to take their land and resources - particularly oil. We rob and kill each other for each other's possessions. We live in a materialistic age where the demands of the business profit motive brainwashes us all into being consumers - materialistic devourers of the earth's resources. We are all to blame, and should not be surprised when the earth bites back.

Cliffs of doom

Today, I took a trip to the seaside with some family members. Being keen spare-time photographers, my wife and I are currently working our way down the East Anglian coast and seeing what photographic opportunities present themselves. With all the concern over global warming, I had forgotten all about coastal erosion until it hit me square between the eyes this afternoon. We pulled in and parked the car at Weybourne beach, just west of Sheringham. The sixty pence my son helped me pay for parking was very reasonable compared to the complete rip-off of three pounds stirling at Wells-Next-the-Sea from whence we had just travelled. Anyway, I had seen a lot of evidence of coastal erosion a few weeks ago at Old Hunstanton where the cliffs have receded inland by a few feet over the past few years. However, at Weybourne, it was much more pronounced as the cliffs were far more obviously receding at a fairly rapid rate. What really brought it home was a large house on top of the cliff. This house had clearly, and fairly recently, been set back a fair distance from the edge of the cliff, but the cliff has receded at an alarming rate. Lying at the bottom of the cliff the remains of the garden wall are to be seen, and peering into the garden itself, the rear patio area is cracked up and falling into the sea. Gradually, the cliff is falling away and it is only a matter of time before the old, rambling house itself, takes the final plunge into oblivion. Pondering this, it occurred to me, that it can only be a matter of time before the shore-line villages themselves meet the same fate and become but distant memories. It would appear that there is little we can do about this. The Eastern seaboard is gradually, over geological periods, sinking anyway, while the far north and west rise further up from out of the sea. The country is on a tilt. Add to this climate change, where we are pretty much assured of the prospect ever more violent storms and high tides, and the gradual rise in sea levels, the whole process is set to accelerate. We must adapt to nature. Nature will not adapt to us.