ONE aspect of the current kerfuffle over climate change seems so parochial, so facetious, so politically incorrect and selfish that it never gets discussed by important newspaper columnists. So it had better be aired here instead. It is this wicked thought. Wouldn’t a smidgin of global warming be rather good for us in Britain?
OK, I did say the notion was parochial, facetious, etc, etc. But just consider this scenario. Global warming would give us a glorious, all-year-round Mediterranean climate. Every town, every suburb, could have its own vineyard, producing its own presumptuous little chardonnay. At half-term the middle classes and their offspring could slope off to villas in Telford instead of Tuscany. We could all rejoice in Californian blue skies for months on end, take four-hour siestas every lunchtime like the Italians, cultivate coconuts in Coventry, bananas in Bradford and oranges in Orpington, and eat alfresco every night from February to November.
True, much of East Anglia would be under the North Sea, and fearful shoals of jellyfish and killer sharks would probably render the rest of our coastline too dangerous for paddling. Oh yes, and France would be turned into the Sahara Desert (North). But heigh-ho; you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
You have to admit that it’s an alluring vision. And now it seems, if the glummer eco-pundits are correct, that such a prospect is but a generation away. But here’s the crucial question. Could the British cope with a climate that wasn’t dreary and damp for at least ten months of each year? My suspicion is that our national psyche would change for the worse as our weather changed for the better.
I detected ominous signs of that during last week’s temporary burst of torrid tropicana. What I notice is that, confronted by a spell of sizzling weather, we British shift very quickly through four distinct psychological states. I call them suspicion, immersion, irritation and revulsion. Suspicion, the first phase, seems to be hard-wired into us. Our weather is generally so unsettled that we instinctively regard any burst of sunshine as a flash in the pan. We think of it as Lady Nature tantalising us, like a flirty dancing partner — only to turn cold and nasty if we start enthusiastically ripping off our clothes in anticipation of hotter joys to come. So we are slow to change our habits. When last week’s heatwave started I was amazed by the number of people still perspiring in jackets on the Tube.
After the first day or two, however, the truth dawns. It becomes clear that we are in for that rarest of British phenomena: prolonged hot weather. That’s when immersion kicks in. Our famed reserve cracks, to be replaced by sun-frenzy. City parks and squares become seas of roasting flesh. And nobody sleeps. Coming home through London in the early hours last week, I found streets thronged with people just soaking up the balmy night air .
That euphoric phase may last two or three days. But then comes irritation. How much sleep can you miss anyway? Shouldn’t you be working instead of lying in a park getting burnt? Isn’t the smog suffocating? And if it doesn’t rain soon, what’s going to happen to the garden?
So finally there is revulsion. People start to hate the sun. Last week’s heatwave wasn’t long enough for that ferocious backlash to be fully felt. But you don’t have to delve very far into the mists of time to find a horrifying illustration of how a generally sanguine nation can frazzle into madness if the meteorological conditions are sufficiently extreme. I refer, of course, to Britain’s scorching s ummer of 1976 — when, from June 23 to August 29, the thermometer hardly fell below 80 and was often in the nineties.
The effect was astonishing. It was too hot to sleep at night and too exhausting to walk, talk or (especially) work during the day. Nerves frayed. Tempers snapped like twigs. Railway carriages were like ovens; the Tube a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. Cultural and social life ceased; people just couldn’t summon the energy. And all those national traits that we hold so dear — fair play, humour, tolerance, compromise — evaporated faster than water in the reservoirs.
It was a dreadful warning. The summer we experienced in 1976 was, of course, no more extreme than what Greece or Spain get every year. But the natives of those countries are equipped psychologically to deal with it, in a way that the British are not. Our mental and spiritual equilibrium depends on our isles being wrapped in the perpetual twilight of a perpetual autumn. A stiff breeze, rain in the air, dark clouds gathering, the delicious forecast of unsettled weather for weeks to come: that is what fuels our sense of irony, moderates our moods and preserves our sanity.
So although I hate to side with the unbearably self-righteous environmental lobby, I reluctantly have to concede (albeit for all the wrong reasons) that global warming would be just as disastrous for us as it would be for countries closer to the Equator. We wouldn’t only be able to grow bananas. We’d go bananas as well.
Mind you, I wouldn’t mind another few days like last week before winter sets in. But please, God, could it be in the first week of August, when I’m on holiday?
His royal dimness
BY general acclamation Prince William is now the “brainiest royal in history” after graduating with a 2:1. His dad got only what’s known in student circles as a “Desmond” — a 2:2. But here’s a brainteaser. Who was the dimmest royal of them all?
The competition is fierce. Could it be King John, who lost the Crown Jewels in the Wash? James II, who dropped the Great Seal in the Thames? Henry VI, who thought his son must have been conceived by the Holy Ghost, because he couldn’t explain his wife’s pregnancy any other way? Or Victoria’s son, the Duke of Clarence? When he was given an honorary degree his tutor muttered that he “barely knows the meaning of the words ‘to read’.”
But in the barking blue-blood stakes the Brits lag way behind the 19th-century King Otto of Bavaria, who felt that the best way to keep alert was to shoot a peasant a day. Fortunately his minders were able to fill his gun with blanks, and guards were told to dress as peasants and fall over when the King fired. Otto, happily, was too dense to realise.
Another tall story
YET another skyscraper is planned for London, or Dallas-on-Thames as it will soon be known. At 1,008ft (307m), Bishopsgate Tower will be only a bit smaller than the proposed “shard of glass” at London Bridge, and far higher than the “erotic gherkin” and Tower 42 (formerly NatWest Tower). The latter, at 600ft, now seems like an ancient pygmy. But don’t you think Londoners would be more amenable to these glass monsters if they were allowed to see the view from the top? I do. It’s a scandal that none of the huge corporate HQs erected so far in the City or Canary Wharf has provided a public viewing platform — as the Empire State Building does. And don’t give me that “security risk” codswallop. It is nothing but fat-cat swanking that puts the directors’ dining room on the 60th floor and keeps ordinary people in their place — trudging the pavements below.
I'll give you happy
PUBLICITY-MAD Dr Cliff Arnall, the “eminent psychologist from Cardiff University” who devised a nonsense formula to tell us that January 24 is the most depressing day of the year, has won a few more headlines with another bit of pseudo-algebra, this time “proving” that June 24 is the happiest day.
Hmm. June 24 was Friday. I had a puncture cycling to work, then suffered repercussions from the previous night’s dodgy curry. And in the post I received what must be Britain’s largest phone bill.
Enough happiness! My cup runneth over. But that’s because the office coffee-machine broke too.
JOIN THE DEBATE
Send your comments to debate@thetimes.co.uk
