It was already hot before 9.00 this morning when I went for my run. Most people I met out and about were declaring their intention to keep out of the sun - early morning and evening walks are the order of the day. One new acquaintance told me all about her twelve year old’s refusal to use sunblock! Temperatures are forecast to hit 33 degrees in so e parts of the UK today. Climate change seems to be affecting us!
Mostly, however, climate change and environmental problems seem to have disappeared from the news. Our MPs are apparently not very concerned. I found this in today’s news:
“Only 60 MPs are expected to attend an emergency climate briefing by the UK government’s chief scientific adviser in parliament on Monday, the Guardian has learned.
The briefing, organised by the climate change all-party parliamentary group, will be an updated version of the slides that the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, showed Boris Johnson before the UN climate summit Cop26 in Glasgow in November. But the APPG told the Guardian fewer than 10% of MPs had signed up to watch.”
There you go!
But climate change is still causing problems. France, Spain and Portugal have already had forest fires, earlier in the year than usual because of prolonged dry conditions. Incidentally, my new acquaintance this morning told me of one of her expeditions, out walking near Marsden. She was approached by some people asking for advice on a good place to set up their portable barbecue. Nowhere near the moors was her response. She even threatened to call the police of she saw them organising a barbecue near the peat moors. We have had enough fires up there in recent years.
One of the more frivolous consequences of climate change, for me anyway, is a threatened shortage of hummus. Partly as a result of the war in Ukraine but also because of drought in places like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, there is apparently a drop in production of chickpeas, a main ingredient of hummus. We are quite big consumers of hummus. When we went off to live in Galicia, Spain, in 2008, we couldn’t find hummus for love or money. I suppose if I’d sought out a specialist whole food shop they might have supplied it but most people I met had never heard of it. A few years later it suddenly appeared in supermarkets, an amazing new food item!
Another thing I had difficulty locating was fresh basil, growing in a pot. Someone in a gardening shop in central Vigo told me, rather condescendingly I thought, that it was impossible to grow it in northern Spain. Too chilly! Not sufficiently Mediterranean! This surprised me as I had long had a basil plant much further north in Manchester. I also found a basil plant after some time and for a while had Basil and Rosemary side by side on my window-ledge.
Something else which has slipped down the news importance ratings is Covid. But, like the climate crisis, it’s not really gone away. Here’s another little item from today’s news:
“Macau has shut all its casinos for the first time in more than two years as authorities struggle to contain the worst coronavirus outbreak yet in the world’s biggest gambling hub.
The city’s 30-plus casinos, along with other non-essential businesses, will shut for one week from Monday and people have been ordered to stay at home. Police would monitor flows of people outside, the government said, and stringent punishments would be imposed for those who disobeyed.”
There you go! Macau is a long way away but we still need to remain vigilant. There are more important things going on than Conservative party leadership elections!
As well as running this morning, I have been out and about on my bike. On Friday I acquired three new lampshades on my visit to IKEA with my daughter. On Saturday we set about installing them. Unlike some items you can buy from IKEA, they were very easy to assemble. We swapped new lampshade for old on one of lights in the kitchen. Very good! We moved on to the two in the other section of the kitchen/dining/living area. After some precarious wobbling on stepladders, Phil discovered that these two light fittings had given in to old age and decrepitude! Once taken apart, they would not go back together; so lampshade replacement was put on hold until we acquired new lamp-holders. I decided that a cycle ride along the Donkey Line to the hardware shop on Uppermill would be cooler than a walk in the sun. A successful expedition!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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