Gwyneth's personal blog

Thursday 15th September, crisp bright morning, the next storm-tail not due until the weekend. Did I say crisp? Apparently there was a frost in parts of the UK last night, "in rural areas". That's good enough for me. Time to come indoors, citrus trees.

They won't be sorry, fresh air hasn't been fun this year. Not a single lemon made it. (The other citrus doesn't have fruit, it'll never be big enough, it's a pip-grown I-don't-know-what in a pot, kind of bonsai, very ancient.)

Many thanks to Sophie Mayer for her book order, £21.25 relayed to Amnesty International.

Arctic Ice Melt in the news again, and the Common Dreams comment-teamsters as usual have a lot to say. I finally read Cormac McCarthy's The Road this summer, and am now puzzled by reports that the catastrophe is "unidentified". Surely that's blatantly a Nuclear Winter/following a Global Nuclear War scenario? Or possibly, or both, a fantasy-heightened record of the mournful adventure of fatherhood. You mean everything to this kid, he worships you and keeps you holy, and then in the end he just grows up and moves on. As an sf reader, I found this slipstream novel engaging, moving, old-fashioned and highly conventional. Where have you been since 1960?, sort of thing. Touching, yes, but disturbing in its message: in short, nothing can be done, and no change in behaviour is required or even advised. Nuclear Winter or Capitalist Summer, we just plod on, we dauntless pursuers of life, liberty and happiness, plundering whatever supplies we find, and it will all come right in the end.

Hm. No wonder book and movie made such a hit with the public.