I feel rather cheated. We had that heatwave earlier in the year, although apart from a few days it seemed to affect more southern part of the country than our northwesterly bit. And for quite a long time we had so much dry weather that I used up almost all the rainwater in the water butt in the garden. And then “dull” set in and more recently an awful lot of rainy weather. On at least two, maybe three, occasions I have had to cancel arrangements to go for a walk with an old friend: once because it had rained and the towpaths we planned to walk along would be too muddy for her, although once, because it was too hot for her. And now I have resigned myself to getting the big wooly jumpers and thick tights out! It feels as though summer tried to get started, stalled and never recovered. Autumn appears to be having a fit of politeness and ushering early winter weather in ahead of time. Somebody stole my summer!
But none of this evidence of climate change (because I’m pretty sure that’s what is messing up the seasons) prevents our prime minister from setting back our targets and projects for reaching zero carbon emissions! Cynics say it’s a ploy to make people vote for him in the election that is not yet set but is imminent according to all the pundits.
Which brings me to a new-to-me word: “solastalgia” - “distress produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment”. The word was coined, I read, in 2003 by an Aistralian philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, specifically in an effort to articulate how people in New South Wales felt about vast tracts of the region being ripped apart by strip coal mining. Solastalgia must be what I feel when I hear that much of the building of new (expensive) houses in areas that were formerly recognised as flood plains, causing flooding in nearby areas of older houses as the water has to go somewhere. I feel the same when I see yet another garden paved over the provide car parking space! It happens a lot around here where the older housing, like ours, is well over 100 years old, mostly built for textile mill workers who had no need for a parking space!
According to Albrecht, those suffering solastalgia feel a sense of dislocation from their home environment, a melancholia; it is, he said, “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”. People interviewed by Albrecht spoke of their distress not only at the destruction of the land around them but its effect on their physical and mental health, and their frustration at their powerlessness to stop it.
Journalist Damien Gayle wrote about going away on holiday, to the Lake District I think, and returned to his south London flat home only to discover that in his absence his neighbour had had the hedges and bushes that separated their two small front gardens ripped out. His daily connection with nature, birds perching in the bush and so on, had been removed. His children wept!
I expect that much of the climate crisis stuff, in this country anyway, will affect city dwellers more than those of us lucky enough to have some reasonably “wild” countryside to escape into. While I was aware of an inevitable financial impact, I admit to not even really trying to get my head around the financial side of it all. However, according to this article “the climate crisis has pushed the Bank of England” to consider stringent new tests for lenders to see how they would cope in an “extreme” catastrophe that plunges “Westminster under water” and sparks a rapid change in government policies.”
One thing I had certainly not thought about, probably because I no longer have a mortgage to worry about, was this: “For example, the chances of borrowers defaulting on their mortgages would increase as the climate crisis put their home at a higher risk of floods or wildfires. “If the house that the mortgage is on is on a floodplain, and climate change is making floods more likely, then that probability of default is going up.”” Who knew?
There we are: the interconnectedness of everything!
On a less serious note, here are two items amused me on the newspapers. The first is about a golden retriever who is apparently “mayor” of Idyllwild in southern California.
Within the article I found this little gem:
“In 1938, Kenneth Simmons, the mayor of Milton, Washington, nominated “Mr. Boston Curtis” for Republican precinct committeeman. With no competition and no information provided to the voters beyond his name, Curtis was elected with a total of 51 votes – and then revealed to be a mule. Simmons, a Democrat, had effectively pranked the town, going on to say that voters “have no idea whom they support”.
Enough said!
The second comes from David Mitchell’s column about the royal family, or rather English royal families over the ages.
“In 1036, King Harold Harefoot had his step-brother Alfred blinded. Four years later, when Harold himself was dead, the new king, his half-brother Harthacnut, took revenge on Alfred’s behalf: he had Harold’s body dug up, beheaded and then chucked in a ditch.”
Who knew we once had a King Harthacnut?
Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!
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