Gwyneth's personal blog

Monday 23rd November, grey, blustery and rainy, horribly mild

Calamitous floods in Cumbria, Catastrophic Fire Warnings in South Australia, and Copenhagen admits defeat before it is even born. How can these things possibly be connected? Not at all, according to the people who script our news coverage. I read in the Independent that the Cumbrian floods "cannot be directly related to Climate Change", and fair enough, if it was an isolated weird weather event. If there wasn't all this other weird stuff, if the Arctic wasn't melting, if there weren't all these other frightening indicators. We could just sit back and enjoy the spectacle, as long as we weren't facing ruin and loss our sweet selves. But the mediafolk and the politicians have never heard of Bayes' Theorem, so they continue, defiantly, to look on the weather as a tossed coin.

Funny how the only people who seem to take the need for drastic action seriously are in Africa (and the aid organisations of course). Oh, and China, I suppose, but China's historical record on Big Interventions is not encouraging. Their efforts in that line have tended more towards making dents in their population that would frighten any other massive superpower.

Meanwhile, in my own sweet little life I'm happy because I beat the City In The Sky at last; because I've managed to put a couple of obstinate things to bed, and because I've had an invitation I like the look of for next July. Unhappy because we have fleas in the house again, despite Frontline Combi (which as pet owners will know, is the latest weapon in the endless battle). It's Ginger, not Milo. She goes somewhere and comes back hopping, and I get bitten. This is the problem with warm winters, warm worlds generally. Parasites flourish. If the warmth comes suddenly the parasites are swift to take advantage, the host species, not so opportunist in design, cannot riposte at the same speed, and they suffer badly.

Wearing Brocades In The Darkness Of Night #n. When I started my first blog, years ago, my first heading was that Genji quote. Nobody knows about this, I said (aside from Peter and Gabriel). I'm not going to publicise, even if I knew now. I'm just going to leave this occasional diary in an unlocked drawer, and if anyone reads it, I may never know. & here I am again, because that "Coming Soon" page at the old address is apparently immoveable, unchangeable. Never mind, I'll carry on. Now and then.

Must now go and cook, and listen to The Rite Of Spring. I'm currently finding out about Stravinsky, for Gabriel's sake, my attitude hampered by the fact that when I was a child ballet was part of the furniture of cultural life, Petruschka and The Firebird were things I was supposed to admire and didn't know why, not revolutionary or weird, good heavens kno. And, plus, The Rite Of Spring to me means dinosaurs. Always and irrevocably, dinosaurs.