picture of Max Salsbury

Warming to Global Warming

Published by Max Salsbury on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 10:32 am

ARTICLE TOOLS

Next

Previous

The sun came back today. It’s now 9pm and the sky still has a tint of the fading azure. How unusual.

The windows are open. I’m listening to music. Everything’s ok. It suddenly occurs to me that I’ve been really miserable for the past 3 months. Suddenly I’m remembering what happiness feels like.

Now I’m beginning to see SAD in another light. I remember when this dubious condition found some currency some years back. I recall thinking, if this has any truth, then something must be done. So, rather than spend the bleaker months in abject seasonal despair, I decided to make a conscious effort to combat SAD with an overdone appreciation for winter’s unique qualities. If you look for them, they are there.

Snow is romantic. Frosty mornings are sexy. Leafless vegetation: saucy and poetic. Freezing nights stuck in the house by the radiator: a good opportunity to appreciate the development of the common house. Nonsense like this has seen me sail through my winters with joy and vim, defeated not by 3-hour days and endless grey. However, it didn’t really occur to me what might happen to my already fragile mind if a summer was stolen. Not until now.

And it is a species of theft, this sunless summer. We live in a country where we can expect nine months of weather that ranges between deeply average and appalling, but we are prepared to live with it as long as we get our 3-month solar-charged rebate. It’s not really a great deal to ask, is it?

Life has a whole new meaning in the sunshine and the heat. The world looks and sounds better. I walked around my garden tonight thinking, why don’t I do this more often, till it occurred to me that I haven’t been able to – what kind of person walks around in the sleet? I only stopped walking around and went indoors when I thought I heard a snake rustling in a yew.

Now, without wanting to sound like Jingo Clarkson, I’m beginning to think that climate change, at least in this country, has probably got some huge benefits. If a whole nation is morose and dissatisfied, then what terrible consequences can that have for the likes of productivity, civility and creativity? Nobody except Philip Larkin can fulfil their potential when they’re staring at the reflection of a grey sky in a stinking puddle.

If, and this really is a big ‘if’, one of the results of our planet-fouling activities is a toast & jam hot UK, then I welcome its arrival. I am sick, quite sick of the rubbish the sky-controllers have seen fit to lash upon us this last few months.

I always thought the ominous tags of ‘white’ and ‘black’ for human beings were a tad misleading, because no one is actually either of those colours. But I tell you; I truly am white at present - truly ghostly. Nuisance weather.

Those protesters at Heathrow need to be enlightened. This diabolical age of unchecked and gargantuan industrial process is potentially our ticket to a country we can finally feel happy to live in, a country of long, hot days and balmy, fun-filled nights. A blatantly selfish and irresponsible attitude, I know, but I just don’t think I can take the non-heat.