Climate change, munchkins and new year tomatoes….

Last night, I got back from the Ring ‘o’ Bells pub surprisingly wide eyed and bushy tailed. So much so, I decided to watch a Christmas present DVD – the disaster movie‘The Day After Tomorrow’.

The film is all about climate change – and the scariest of catastrophic climate scenarios: the buggering up of the Gulf Stream – or ‘North Atlantic Current’ as film star Dennis Quaid insisted on calling it. The physics involve billions of tonnes of melt water from the polar ice caps. The water flows on top of the salt sea water, sinks the Gulf Stream to the frozen depths of the ocean – and stops it…..

The warming goodness of the Gulf Stream ends, the whole of western civilisation freezes – and Dennis Quaid ends up the hero. Of course, it’s all a right load of simplistic Hollywood rubbish isn’t it?

Mind you, last night, outside, the weather went uber nuts. Stormy, rainy and tempesty – it reminded me of Munchkins, Kansas, Dorothy and Toto….. But this wasn’t a dust bowled mid-west state, it was soggy Lancashire in January. There were no Munchkins – I hadn’t drunk enough to see any. Our dog, Domino was dead to the world, and I look crap in a gingham dress & ruby red slippers…

But it got me thinking, the seasons are definitely in flux – and after reading about The Birdman’s seasonally weird Ox-Eye daisy encounter, maybe the climate really is changing.

Half way through the film, I pressed ‘pause’ and decided to have a nice ham and tomato sandwich. The ham came from the remaining bits of the hamper my Mum had given me at Christmas. And the tomato? It came all the way from my green house, it was the very last from the crop of 2006 – and I picked it at the weekend… Now that really is climate change.

Maybe we should rename the seasons, get rid of a couple of them as being surplus to requirements…. Just have 2 rather than the 4 we have now. Maybe we could have a competition, suitably sponsored by the Sun…. You could win, win, win big in our special comp to rename the seasons. An executive ‘Gulf Stream’ jet, a luxury Chelsea tractor or your very own coal-powered Power Station could all be yours! Not only that, but the winner will get to plant a tree to help offset his carbon impact! It’s all in your greener, cleaner, environ mental -as-anything Sun, now!

I thought of ‘Strummer’ and ‘Winting’ as my new seasons – a homage to the Clash front man and a subtle and clever fusion of Winter and Spring, brilliant eh?…. Sure fire winners if ever I saw them…. Maybe the weather is going further, sliding into a minging mono season of grey, lukewarmy windy dampness – where the only things we can look forward to is trenchfoot, walking at an angle of 45 degrees and Christmas tomatoes…..

Time will tell.