FraserWords

If one more person says to me “Oh, but those poor people in Somerset”, I shall do something really terrible, like make that person live in bloody Somerset.

Yes, yes, of course, those poor people in Somerset. What an absolute nightmare they are suffering, and who would want to share their underwater world with them?

But – and may the Coconut-Eating Crab, the malevolent deity who rules our misbegotten lives and who has summoned this Biblical cataclysm of rain as part of his or her evil revenge on creation for the crappy hand it dealt to him or her in the first place, forgive me – but, as I was saying, Somerset butters no parsnips with me.

When I am trudging in from the river that used to be a lane with mould growing inside my wellies and a stinking soaking collie dog and my last set of waterproofs clinging wetly to my gently steaming body; as I gaze out of the window at the swamp that used to be a garden, at the wreckage of my polytunnel, at soil that will bear no crops this spring, at my field in which it is no longer possible to stand, at the rutted wasteland that used to be my back drive before it was swept away, I am afraid I consider Somerset only to say: “Stuff Somerset. What about Cornwall?”

However. If there’s one thing I dislike more than people saying “Oh, but those poor people in Somerset”, it’s those smug buggers – step forward, or rather stagger forward, Brother Fiddle – who say “How’s this for your global warming, then?” You know, the sort of apologist for giant polluting corporations who believes climate change means only that we’ll all be gasping for a drink of water while sunbathing in a worldwide desert.

I mean, I don’t care a damn whether man-made climate change exists, as every single one of the world’s leading scientific bodies insists, as all leading environmental scientists insist, or whether man-made climate change doesn’t exist, as every leading corporate rich guy insists, as every leading businessman insists, as every leading polluter insists, as every website of the sort that peddles Princess Diana assassination conspiracy theories, children’s vaccination scare stories and alien abduction reports insists. I don’t care.

What I do care about is this: everything all the people who believe man-made climate change exists say we should do makes sense. Even if there’s no such thing as man-made climate change, a world with more trees, less cars and lorries, less pollution, less farting cows whose beef clogs the arteries of lard-arsed Americans, less noise and drive and economic growth, that’s a world that sounds a whole heap better than the raining world we’ve got.

You believe what you like about climate change. I’ll believe in doing the right things, even if they’re for the wrong reasons.

Is this rain to do with climate change? Of course it is; the climate changes every day, every decade, every century, every millennium… you get the picture. Is that climate change, this time, man-made? I refer you to my above answer – I don’t give a damn. I do believe it’s man influenced, but that’s by the by. If there’s anything we can do to make the world a more pleasant place, lead me to it.

And frankly, if some straggle-bearded lentil-wearing pot-smoking hippy trotted up to my front door tomorrow morning and said that if I shoved a daffodil up my jacksie and ran naked down Pall Mall singing the Croatian national anthem waving a tickling stick and a placard saying “How’s this for a floral tribute, Missis?”, this fucking rain would stop, do you know what? Pass me that daffodil.

Wrong problem, wrong solution

Listening to the news this morning and the ongoing debate about whether parents should be fined if they take their children out of school to go on holiday, I thought: “How absolutely typical of this benighted country.”

Problem: Holidays for families during school holidays are prohibitively expensive because profiteering companies ramp up the prices to scandalous levels as soon as the gates open. Parents take the solution into their own hands.

Solution: Does this country…

A: Pass legislation capping holiday prices so more families can enjoy vital leisure time together, playing a tiny part in preventing break-ups and improving health?

Or B: Leave the rich companies alone, and instead have a go at the parents doing their best for their children?

What a petty, vindictive, mean-spirited little debate this is. I hope parents the length and breadth of the land have the courage to do as I know brothers and sisters of this place would, and do, do – tell anybody who’d support such shrivel-souled cold-hearted jobsworth  nonsense to sod right off. Children’s lives are not just about work and work and work. They’re about fun. And you can teach that lesson much better when you’re on holiday.