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It is our anniversary, brothers and sisters. A year ago this very week, there began the winter of 2012-13. After a March heatwave, I took off my shorts (sorry for the attendant image), flung on the waterproofs and thermals and have been wearing them ever since, even in bed.

For 12 months now the weather has thrown everything at us – though I won’t ask you to take my word for it. I approached the oracle yesterday, Old Father Cullingham. He pursed his lips, cast his eyes skyward to consult the thought cloud he’s started carrying with him, and offered: “Well, last May wasn’t bad.” And that was the best of it.

So perhaps we can agree the compromise that the winter of 2012-13 has lasted 11 of the last 12 months? Either rain or cold, one or the other. And not rain in the way it used to rain, oh no. It doesn’t just rain any more. It’s monsoon or nothing, crashing floods and no middle ground.

Well, the majority of the world’s scientific community and, this week, the Government’s chief scientist himself, puts it all down to global climate change, though others ask us to accept that as we are not all perched on the patio in shorts and t-shirts sipping Pimm’s in the glorious sunshine, there can’t be any such thing.

As I’ve said before, I’m not too sure it matters who’s right: emitting less carbon dioxide would be a terrific thing for us all whether it causes climate change or not, so perhaps we could do so and improve our quality of life.

If we are living through one of the planet’s climatic cycles and can do nothing about it well, OK. But can’t we make our end days more pleasant and less polluted? Less smoke in the air, less cars on the road?

Creating content

An anonymous brother responded to recent diatribes about the changes in my old industry, newspapers – you’ll recall I’ve wittered on about how the corporate owners have let down the heritage and tradition of which we all should be so proud, and which we all need to continue.

This source tells me that in the corporation that now owns many of our local newspapers here in Devon and Cornwall, a decree has come down saying that reporters are, in fact, now “content creators”. Or “social media aggregators”. Editors are “content directors”.

Gosh. Says it all, doesn’t it?

It reflects, I guess, the slack-jawed terror the internet continues to inflict on corporate owners, and their consequent acceptance of the never-proved assertion that the net spelt death for newsprint; they have invested countless millions in on-line publishing, but in their panic forgot one essential thing – how to make money out of it. Those titles that charge to be read on-line have no readers; those that make content available free have suffered obvious and attendant cataclysmic falls in circulation.

These allegedly successful big businesses even today get 88 per cent of their dosh from paper, and 12 per cent electronically. But after all these years they haven’t worked out that offering your product for free is not good business. Nor have they worked out a way to get people to pay for their product. But they have come up with new names for reporters.

Now that’s the sort of big business in which we are asked to put our trust.

Creating discontent

Eddie Mair and his evisceration of Boris Johnson, a complete joy which I urge you all to watch on iPlayer or whatever the hell it is, is said to prove journalism is alive and well, and to an extent it does so.

But it stands out because for so long star-struck media types have treated Boris as an amiable buffoon who’s entirely harmless and good for a soundbite or comic stunt. Until Mair struck on Sunday, journalism seemed to have forgotten that he was a putative leader of our country, and an existing leader of our capital.

And people voted for him. Now that’s no laughing matter at all.

And finally

Right, time to collect a carful of assorted children and deliver them to various locations, then cook food. A retired hack’s window-gazing is never done.

And one last thing: how pleasant to wish Brother Doney a very warm welcome to the land of the old fart.