13 December 2016
I was taking a wander around the garden today armed with my trusty Polish licensed air rifle having seen a rather large rat scuttling below the bird feeders yesterday. I couldn’t but help notice roses in full bloom and green shoots peeking out of the dark muck. It was minus 5 about a week ago and 10 degrees today, now dipping into full bore on the wood burning stove territory.
I remember way back during the ‘Feast’ sessions a bit of a kerfuffle occurring on these pages as the global warming deniers rallied and ranted when I voiced my opinions. The “is he? isn’t he?” question about the president elect and the Paris agreement as Mr Trump performs more U turns on the issue than a taxi driver in the middle of an inner city riot sprung to mind.
Scrolling down to the depths of media web pages below the gory and provocative headlines I’ve noticed more and more proclamations from those once cast as ‘doom mongers who are now presenting information that’s hard to ignore and who are being slightly more resentfully respected these days.
Some of the pronouncements are rather scary. Areas of ice the size of India melting away, entire species on the brink of extinction and others struggling to cope with even a degree of temperature rise in their natural habitats. The jokey news item about how squid could replace our traditional battered cod and haddock in the traditional fish supper as the waters around this confused island warm and shift our shiny silver friends towards colder climes. Droughts and famine, floods and flames and storms out of the blue, we can still raise a smile at a Saudi skating along a snow packed highway as he shouts with glee at the new experience.
Against the savagery and overwhelming sadness in the Middle East and beyond, the posturing of babbling politicians and lawyers deciphering the “will of the people” , the cacophony of gibbering tweets from the new dank swamp and the whirling counters of this unholy Rapture that has gripped a World that seems to be creating new man made catastrophes every day, the ominous eventuality of our planet expiring through ecological reasons is the second bullet in a “double tap” suicide.
And what’s provoked me to write this?
I jogged a mouse onto the Amazon ‘Feast of Consequences’ reviews last night and was interested in the reviews for once. Not the ‘positives’ but the ‘negatives’. One of them delivered this-
“Even on the better songs Fish usual gift for a sharp lyric seems to have deserted him a bit e.g “We should have talked about the weather a bit more seriously,”
I smiled.
I smelled the open rose, came inside from the garden and locked away the gun in it’s cabinet. The rat can have another day scuttling around on this planet and I thank him for the inspiration.