Tag Archives: winter

Weather or not?

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                So here in the South of the UK we have been deluged by storms, wild winds and relentless rain since early December. Yet curiously, the press continues to feature the stories of fallen trees, collapsed roads and rail networks, homes without power , flooded buildings and drownings as if they were news. How many people are left who are surprised by the endless flood of stories and the deluge of videos on the subject?

                Elsewhere in the world, large tracts of land are drought and fire ridden or have been locked into a standstill by statistic-busting snowfalls and gigantic freeze-ups. Presumably their journos and pursuing a similar line of ceaseless weather reportage. Is anyone else suffering from weather news fatigue, as I am?

                Here on England’s South coast we have been battered and buffeted enough to have sprung some leaks and lost some roof tiles, a nuisance and an expense if nothing else, but of course you can only feel sympathy for those whose properties have been flooded and ruined for the second, third or even fourth time in one winter. This weather, they all agree, is unprecedented. I feel sure that the Australian home owners who have lost everything in bush fires must feel the same. Is there anyone left who is still a climate change sceptic? Whether you believe it is man-made or not, that it is happening cannot be denied.

                We in the so called democratic countries elect our ruling parties on the strength of their policies, do we not? But can there be an issue in the world that is more pressing, more urgent than climate change? I don’t think so. Yes, terrorism is a frightening prospect, economic depressions affect everyone and the world’s dwindling resources provoke anxiety-but all of these issues, I believe are connected to the increasing gap between rich and poor [yes-even terrorism] which is a direct result of climate conditions. The poorest peoples live in the places that struggle most with inhospitable weather, most in Africa. These are the places where extremist, terrorist groups are most likely to get a toehold and then a stranglehold, where a population is starved and impoverished and unable to respond or retaliate.

                And so what have the developed nations done? Have they got together to implement policies for world good? Have they agreed to share resources, work out ways to minimise damage, acknowledge that fossil fuels are not going to last forever, that sustainable energy sources are vital and that the needs of the starving, desperate peoples on the planet must be addressed by all of us? No. Some lip service has been paid. The UN has been meeting since 1992 and has still not reached any binding agreement. Have an expensive, lavishly serviced meeting of world leaders [all arriving in expensive, heavily guarded private aircraft], wring their hands a bit and go away again.

                The world’s populations will just have to shift. The peoples of the more advantaged nations will have to accommodate those whose environments have become uninhabitable. This will leave vast areas of the planet devoid of humans. What wonderful places they will be!

January revisited

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                It is unreasonable to expect much to change within a one year time frame. When I look back at the first three posts of last year the immediate thing that strikes is that they were much shorter-by about half! So either I could not think of much to say at the time, and have become more practised at writing dross, or I have become even more verbose; or a combination of the two.

                The beginning posts were somewhat grumpy. I set out my case for disliking musicals, citing ‘Les Mis’ as a prime example of everything I did not like. This is still true; although following this diatribe I did download the novel [gloriously free for classics] and made a worthy attempt to read it. I have to say now that having tried several times to wade through this famous and admirable classic novel the musical comes across as a little less awful. Never let it be said I cannot climb down a rung or two when proved wrong. You have to admire the makers of said musical, to have constructed a universally popular, understandable tearjerker from such an incomprehensible narrative.

                The Christmas and New Year season is the only holiday period which features [for us in the Northern hemisphere, at least] reliably ghastly weather, no more so in the UK than this year, when we have been battered by gale force winds and squally downpours consisting of rain, sleet and hailstones for about a month now. It is not conducive to going out, for taking bracing walks or winter bike rides. Unless your heart’s desire is to while away the hours in the sales [see previous post, ‘Boxing Day-a Daft Party or a Bun Fight?’] you are stuck with a choice of a good book, getting on with a project [Novel 2 for me] or the dismal TV schedules. The TV planners appear to save all of their dross for the winter months, as if their only objective was to make viewers as miserable as possible. The screen guide is peppered with reality shows, manically overwrought ‘comedy’, ancient movies from the year dot [trotted out every year] and re-runs. I found the only viewable items-‘Death Comes to Pemberley’-a barmy idea but a good romp, and ‘Jane Eyre’-a new adaptation of a reliable yarn. These I recorded, only to discover that Jane Eyre’s recording had been interrupted by a signal failure fifteen minutes before the end [and was no longer available on i-player]. Great…

                It’s not all depressing. We made an overnight trip to Gloucestershire for a birthday party, travelling back through the gloomy rain and the cold today. There are already catkins covering the hazel trees and fluffy buds on the willows, the first signs that the year is turning. Light at the end of the January tunnel! Happy New Year!

Long Live Story Telling

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                Here endeth Fiction Month on Anecdotage. If you’ve read and enjoyed the stories, check out ‘The Year of Familiar Strangers’[by my alter ego, Jane Deans]-available to download from Amazon[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Familiar-Strangers-Jane-Deans-ebook/dp/B00EWNXIFA]. 

; or send an email address on a blog comment to enter the draw for a free download before the end of December.

                Thanks to everyone for your visits, ‘likes’ and comments. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the response. It has given me food for thought. Stories are never going to go out of fashion and can be enjoyed by all, from the very young to the very old.

                Now for the confession. Besides the [very real] conditions of Alice Munro’s success and National Novel Writing Month I did have an ulterior motive for preparing all those stories for November. I was away. In an indulgent, luxurious, hedonistic moment last April I booked a month long trip to Thailand, which is where we have been while ‘Fiction Month’  was enjoying its own heady moment in the sun.

                During the last couple of years I’d become increasingly aware that a large number of friends, acquaintances and family members had been to Thailand, indeed many take repeated trips there. This intrigued me. Why was it such a popular destination? As usual, ‘word-of-mouth’, photos, books and the internet are not enough. I have to see for myself. November, a drab, colourless, draughty month in the UK, seemed a good choice of time, the three destinations we’d chosen would give a fair snapshot of this gem of the East. We would avoid a good deal of the welling Christmas frenzy and the long, dark nights.

                To arrive to Bangkok from the UK in November is to step out from a chiller cabinet into an oven and feels as if a hair dryer is being trained on your face. The first hurdle is to negotiate the winding pen that houses the immigration queue, the second the queue for a taxi, the third the hour long drive into Bangkok centre, where the traffic seems at a constant standstill in the shadow of the concrete, elevation of the sky-train. Despite all of this it is a teeming, colourful, chaotic wonder of a city with beautiful, exotic temples, tall sky towers, crowded night markets, waterways with packed water taxis, a wide, winding river, gaudy tuk-tuks, street stalls selling a fantastic variety of bizarre identifiable and non-identifiable foods-[fried locusts being a popular option], ‘Irish’ pubs, ‘Australian’ pubs, bars with tiny, barely clad girls, bars with less tiny, glamorous, deep voiced ladyboys and a vast range of restaurants selling some of the most delicious meals you could hope to enjoy.

                An evening’s entertainment in this whirlwind of a metropolis need consist only of sitting in a bar and watching the street activity, a ceaseless, moving drama playing out each and every night until late and followed in the morning by an almost eyrie calm, the streets having been miraculously cleaned and tidied.

                We stayed five nights, by which time Husband had developed a persistent cough as a result of the poor air quality. We moved on to destination two…

                

Reasons to be Cheerful…[part 1]

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January is a gloomy month. Once the gluttonous, exuberant, over-consumption of Christmas and New Year is over there is little to recommend it. TV channels have exhausted their supply of money and ideas. It is long, cold, dark, often penurious…in the aftermath of all the spending…, and frequently marked by periods of nasty weather. Many are prompted to comment, ‘We are always caught out in this country’, ‘why aren’t we prepared?’ etc when airport runways and motorways are unusable, or ‘look at Norway’, ‘look at Canada’; ‘they don’t get caught out’! They don’t. But the reason we aren’t prepared in the way that they are, is that our climate has always been unpredictable, and getting more so.

                In January we are bombarded with alluring offers: ‘Two for one on main courses for dining between 11 am and 12.30pm, choosing from the 2 for 1 menu’ [ie ponyburger and chips with garlic bread].

‘One extra night free during weekdays’ [at the Travel Inn Express, Uttoxeter motorway services…on the M6…you might be lucky and get a 2 for 1 at Little Chef [see above]].

‘Ryanair’s £8 winter seat sale’; [fly from Stansted, Luton or Manchester on a Tuesday or Thursday morning at 5.20am to an obscure airport fifty miles from eg Barcelona, Alicante or Marbella].

‘Cruise in the Med’ [I’ve made my feelings clear about cruising in the previous post], ‘from £199 [for two nights] or upgrade to an ‘exterior’ cabin for just an additional £50 each’. This extra £50 each is for a window. For two nights!

                No, I’m not tempted by any of this. When I venture out into my back garden and scrape away some of the grey slush that is covering it I can detect some new, green spikes of growth where bulbs are beginning to show. There are fat buds on the camellia bush. It is all there, waiting in the wings of winter. In a couple of weeks the snowdrops will be up. I come back in and warm up with the wood burner. I make vast pots of soup. Curl up. Read.

                At this time of year there is nowhere in Europe that is truly warm. So I prefer to wait, accept the vagaries of the weather and plan what we will do when the weather does, finally come out of hibernation. And be glad…because despite the miserable, cold, dark and wet conditions this is winter, doing what it is supposed to do. With any luck, then it will be spring. These are the seasons and we are fortunate to have them!